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People would build generating stations and then just run wires to their customers.
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So you'd have a a telephone pole with, you know, dozens, if not hundreds of wires.
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And to get away from that and to uh enhance the economic output for the country as a whole, uh, the utility structure was created originally in in Chicago.
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And so instead of having you know hundreds of wires on a pole, you'd have one.
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And that would feed every single house or every single farm or every single factory on that same line.
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Our ability to create utilities and to regulate them back at that time in particular when we needed to invest and grow, both how much generation we had and where we were where we were delivering power was really instrumental in allowing the grid to become as complex as it is today.
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The world of energy and the technology shaping it.
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I'm Josh Tate, and this is Between Two Turbines.
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Alan, welcome back to the show.
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I'm glad to be back.
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Yeah.
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Well, today what I wanted to do was take kind of a brief history of how we got here, how the grid um became the grid, the way we know it now.
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It seems like a lot of things are marked by uh, you know, problems along the way, and it's solving those problems.
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And and now we're at a very complex system.
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I've heard some people say it's the largest machine in the entire world.
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Largest and most complex.
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Yeah.
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And so I think, especially for me, um, and and for NACE and for people related to NASE, there's a lot to kind of understand.
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I wanted to talk through in broad strokes where we came from, where we're at today.
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And so going back, you know, way back in time, we're talking Thomas Edison, Nicola Tesla, and you know, back in the day, we we really didn't understand the possibilities.
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And and I almost think if they could see where we're at now, they may think it's utopian in a lot of ways.
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And um just light uh, you know, in and of itself was such a big problem.
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We lived in darkness for most of human history, and now we can get a light anywhere.
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Yep.
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And so going back to you know, those early days, um, that first generating station in in New York City, uh, it only powered 85 people.
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Yep.
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And it was on DC power.
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So starting out, I mean, I'd I'd like to hear your commentary on on where we were at on the DC AC side.
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There was kind of this war going on.
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And and and so yeah, Edison, more of a businessman than than Tesla.
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It seems like he was more focused on the physics, the science of it.
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Yep.
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So yeah, what are your thoughts there?
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Yeah, I mean, that those, you know, back in the late 1800s when when um kind of we started with with central generating plants were an interesting time.
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And one of the things I think about a lot is that, you know, of course, Edison had the first one, that Pearl Street station, which I think you alluded to, um, and it powered 80 homes and proof of concept.
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And he just ran wires to those homes.
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So uh there were some telephone or telegraph poles at the time, and he just put wires on those and ran them to his customers.
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Yeah.
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And then as other folks saw, hey, that's a way I could make money, they built their plants and then ran wires to their customers' homes.
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Yeah.
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So like London, Chicago, some of these bigger cities, but still it was just the city center.
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Yeah.
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Um, maybe kind of the elite class that that got access to it or some of these businesses like JP Morgan, some of some of these others.
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We've come a long way.
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Yeah.
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It scaled up and and you look at uh the uh Chicago World's Fair, there's kind of the first place that I think Westinghouse and Tesla kind of um showed out really.
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Yeah.
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And and looking back at some of these old images, you can see them.
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It's it's like it looks modern in a in a sense, but you know, it's the 1800s.
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And I I could imagine what I've heard is some reports people would weep when they got there is they've just never seen um, you know, such a large area just being fully lit.
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Fully lit, yes.
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And I think when we think about electricity, um, initially the the first thought was light.
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Yeah.
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How do we get light?
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How do we become productive in dark hours?
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Yep.
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And so it's it's changed our civilization dramatically.
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I mean, yeah, um, you know, not only with modern tech, but just the ability to write and and do things by candlelight, you'd have to have the money to, you know, for gas lamps or for candles, et cetera.
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But now, you know, especially with like LEDs, we're not using that much electricity to to get this light that's um such a major utility to us.
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Yep.
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Do you have thoughts about that?
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Yeah, I mean, the the world would not be the what the world is today without electricity.
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And and certainly, you know, our country went through significant investment um kind of from the early 1900s, you know, through the 1940s to get electricity all across the country.
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Um there was a rural electrification effort in the 30s that um uh allowed us to bring power into the non-city centers.
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And um of course it was a public works type project, uh, and it was you know started during the Great Depression when we we needed to find jobs for for people.
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Um, but it was also uh I think very wise of our policymakers at the time to make that investment um and to create the opportunity for power to be all uh across the US.
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And you know, one of the interesting things I think about is is the utility structure that that uh was created.
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I was mentioning earlier that people would build generating stations and then just run wires to their customers.
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So you'd have a a telephone pole with you know dozens, if not hundreds of wires.
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And to get away from that and to uh enhance the economic output for the country as a whole, uh the utility structure was created originally in in Chicago.
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And and so what that allowed for was a utility would have a monopoly in a certain geographical region, but they'd have a capped amount of profit that they could make.
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And so instead of having you know hundreds of poles on a or hundreds of wires on a pole, you'd have one, and that would feed every single house or every single farm or every single factory on that same line.
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And so um that uh our ability to create utilities and to regulate them back at that time in particular when we needed to invest and grow, um uh both how much generation we had and where we were where were we delivering power was really instrumental in allowing the grid to become as complex as it is today.
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Yeah.
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And a lot of, you know, at the time these were all separate, you know, generating stations.
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They didn't have an idea of actually interconnecting any of this.
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Yep.
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And from my understanding, a lot of from the 30s, 40s, those transmission lines we still are using.
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Yes.
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That's pretty amazing.
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Yeah, it it's amazing and also a little scary.
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Yeah.
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Um, you know, some of those lines, um, you know, they need to be upgraded.
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We've had issues uh particularly in in the West with forest fires with some of the let's call them hundred-year-old, eighty-year-old lines that uh despite best efforts, haven't maybe been as maintained as well as they could have been.
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Um and so, you know, we did that investment then, but there's probably more investment that we need to do to to both upgrade the grid today and to enhance it.
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Um because you know, we need a lot more energy now than we ever have, and just leveraging those those old lines built, you know, between the 1930s and let's call it the 1970s isn't gonna get us where we need to be.
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Yeah.
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And it it seems like a lot of it was just we were solving problems as we went.
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Yep.
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And, you know, kind of going back to that era, Tesla, Westinghouse working together, really showing that AC as a proof of concept was gonna work.
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Yep.
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And it made sense as the um major way to transmit energy, yep, um, electricity around, you know, the United States and beyond.
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Yeah.
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And from there, they they made this uh first generating station, Niagara Falls, a like 11 megawatts.
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Huge.
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Um and even they I saw they they uh advertised it as 15,000 uh horsepower.
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Yep.
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And so um, you know, which you know, you look at some of these modern um, you know, hydroelectric like in in China, what is it, 23,000 megawatts, something like that.
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Exactly, yeah.
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So it's it pales in comparison, but it was this proof of concept, and they said, um, and this was all privately invested.
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Funded.
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It was not even the government wasn't ready to invest in that.
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And so this project was that proof of concept, and and from there it just the the station started to pro proliferate around the country.
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Yep.
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And yeah, I mean, that that process of of connecting the grid, um, you know, we started realizing we needed these turbines to be spinning at the same rate.
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Yep.
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Um tell tell me about some of that stuff.
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Yeah, I mean that so in those early days, let's call them early 1900s up through the the 40s, um, you know, the there wasn't really power systems as a as a uh course of study didn't really exist.
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And so a lot of the the learnings came out of industrial applications where they would have a lot of motors on a site and and they would see frequency imbalances or other things that were happening within uh the factory itself.
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And we took those learnings and said, okay, what if you spread that across a geographical area that's got a hundred generators and ten thousand uh interconnection points and and that kind of stuff, and that's a lot of where the theory around power systems came from.
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And so there, you know, some of the the there's physical geographical challenges, you know, our are we call it the grid, but there's really four separate grids in North America.
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Um there's the eastern and western separated basically by the Rockies.
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Uh Texas uh is a separate grid because they wanted to regulate themselves without any uh federal oversight, and then um uh Quebec uh similarly and Canada wanted to have a a separate grid for the same reason.
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So they they didn't have federal oversight from the Canadian uh side.
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And so um a lot of these these concepts like slowly came together um and the benefits of being interconnected with your neighbor utility outweighed the cost of the regulation of the regulation for it.
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And so um, you know, the one of the things that that I was heavily involved in here at NACE was our NURC team and and and you know, Nurk originally came out in the 60s after an outage that that occurred in the 60s and it was voluntary, right?
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It was only for utilities.
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We started to see the complexity was growing too fast, yep.
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Um there were problems that were possible that we didn't quite realize, and as we started interconnecting, it became even more complicated.
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Right.
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Right.
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Nobody expected you could lose 20, 30, 40 billion people from a single event until it happened.
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Yeah.
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And so, you know, going back to the when we first started creating these lines all across the US, um, and and to the first really major uh publicly funded, you know, looking at the hydroelectric, you know, for instance the Hoover Dam or Grand Coulee Dam um, massive projects, and this is uh, you know, right around World War II, this type of thing.
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Um the scale of the Hoover Dam being at you know uh 1300 megawatts and and looking at Niagara Falls at 11 megawatts.
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Um obviously that's been um you know shut down.
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They have a more modern version now, but you know, it's it's amazing.
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I I would imagine at the time 1300 megawatts was kind of unthinkable.
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Yeah.
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The amount of power would have been just shocking.
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Power the whole West Coast or something, you know, the the thinking was it was yeah.
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And and do we I mean, do we really have LA or some of these cities the way that we do without that that power generation, that cheap energy flowing in?
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Yeah.
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And is the same goes for Seattle.
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What are your thoughts on that?
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Yeah, no, I I agree.
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I mean, I think the um the ability to to have the power the or the energy needed to manufacture, to create movies, you know, you're talking about LA is critical to the growth of of these types of cities in the West in particular.
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Um you know, one of the big challenges in the West is is kind of the distance from generation to where the population centers are.
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And so uh many of the plants were built like uh you mentioned Grand Coulee and the Hoover Dam.
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Uh when those were built, there was very, very little population in those areas.
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And so we had these very long transmission lines to get it to the coasts, basically, where the population was growing.
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And even later into the 60s, 70s, 80s, uh coal plants were being built, let's call it in the mountain west.
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Yeah.
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And with the same idea, move that power to the coast, particularly to California, as its population was booming.
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And outside of these hydroelectric, primarily these generating stations were coal powered, is that right?
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Yeah.
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I mean, coal, coal um, you know, probably from the 50s through the 90s into the early 2000s was our primary uh generating source uh as a country as a whole.
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And I think post-World War II, um, we started looking at kind of this nuclear era of generating.
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Something I find interesting about the nuclear uh power generation is they act similarly to like a coal or natural gas plant and that they're always on.
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And I wonder um why didn't we invest more?
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It seems like you know, I look at like France, they're primarily powered by nuclear.
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80% nuclear in France, yeah.
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And I realize a lot of the lead times for construction on these types of plants could be 10 years or um, you know, and whereas putting natural gas, especially after um, you know, the advent of fracking and and just the the cost reduction.
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Yep.
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So what's your thought there?
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I mean, the the transition, we had these major hydroelectric dams.
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Geographically, there's not really other locations to build projects of that scale.
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Correct.
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Um and so, you know, we we built out coal, got to about the 90s, 2000s, and then uh kind of that breakthrough of fracking kind of came into place.
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But uh, what's your thought on on that timeline?
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Yeah, I mean, specific to nuclear, um, you know, I think it's a it's a very abundant energy source that I wish there was more of domestically here here in the US and and all across North America.
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Um, you know, I think that the biggest challenge with nuclear is the fear.
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Um, you know, a a catastrophic event like a Chernobyl, and then there was also Three Mile Island.
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Sure.
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Um, it scared the public.
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There were we were talking about, you know, kind of Hollywood before their movies, yeah, the the the China syndrome and and and others that really scared the public even more.
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And so public support for nuclear uh significantly eroded uh by the mid-80s, uh let's call it 85, 86 time frame.
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And so while there had there were dozens of additional units that had been planned to be built, including NACE was originally founded to operate uh six plants that were going to be built in Washington State, of which only one got completed.
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Um that that public outcry uh really just shut down the industry.
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In fact, there was a there was a plant in California uh in the Sacramento area that got funded, built, started up, and then there was a um there was a vote, the public decided to shut it down after only one year of operation.
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So it's a billion-dollar investment just lost.
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Somewhat of human nature, maybe so you know, go you had mentioned the the Northeast blackout, 30 million without power.
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Uh, you know, at the time I think that was what 30% of the population?
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It was a massive.
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The one in the 60s, yeah, right.
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Which which eventually found you know created Nurk.
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Yep.
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Um, you know, what did they really even have a concept of that being a possibility at the time?
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I mean, it's it seems like it's generally a domino effect that they don't account for is like, well, we have these three things in place, and but if they all go offline, then you know you could end up with a major blackout like that.
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Right.
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And yeah, I mean, I I would say that it it you may have had, you know, some PhDs at at universities saying, hey, watch out, this might happen.
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But but generally speaking, kind of within the industry, uh, there wasn't a concept that that you could have such a such a large cascading event.
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Yeah.
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But even then seeing is believing.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Even then, even after that happened, it was still well, one at that time in the in the mid-sixties, everything was a utility.
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There weren't kind of IPPs uh like we know them today, and you know, where NACE primarily works.
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Um, but it still was it was uh best practices sharing.
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It wasn't a required thing.
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It was just, hey, you utilities, you should work together better and coordinate, you know, uh make sure that your relays are set properly, et cetera, et cetera.
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It was the next blackout in 2001 where we lost 50 million people, similar uh area of the of the of the grid where Congress finally said, okay, this is gonna be required.
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Right.
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We're not just gonna say you should.
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So it went from just uh, you know, advice to regulation.
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Yes, exactly.
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And with stiff penalties if you if you don't do it.
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Right.
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Because the uh potential, you know, negative outcomes become so much greater as it expands.
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Like we said, the largest machine in the world.
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Yep.
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Um so you know, you you mentioned 2003, 55 million without power.
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Yep.
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That really solidified what NURC is doing.
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Yep.
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Um tell sort of weave in the the story of NACE.
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Because we uh you know we did come about in the the 80s, but yeah, um, you know, your hand in and what we're doing with Nurk was a big part of that.
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So I'm curious to hear your story on that.
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Yeah.
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Um you mentioned, you know, NACE started in in 1980.
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We did our first O and M contract in 1987.
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And and the reason that that um a company like NACE could exist was because the market was changing.
00:20:15.440 --> 00:20:18.559
Um so I mentioned in the 60s it was all utilities.
00:20:19.279 --> 00:20:36.880
Um in in the 70s uh there was uh uh an act through Congress passed called PERPA that allowed power plants that supplied steam to some kind of process industry to be built with private money.
00:20:37.279 --> 00:20:40.079
It no longer needed to be regulated by the utility.
00:20:40.480 --> 00:20:47.519
Um and actually this PERPA regulation required the utility to purchase the power from those plants.
00:20:48.000 --> 00:20:52.720
So it started to to just kind of crack the door a little bit on deregulation.
00:20:53.119 --> 00:20:57.279
And so that's what created the opportunity for NACE to exist as an OM company.
00:20:58.160 --> 00:21:08.799
And um so you know, we we we there were few IPPs when we started doing that work in in the mid-80s, and more and more in them over time.
00:21:08.960 --> 00:21:14.960
In particular, starting in about 1996 uh through 2002, there was a huge boom.
00:21:15.039 --> 00:21:22.799
Uh uh uh there was a a large demand growth expected just like we're seeing today, and so lots and lots of plants are being built, and it was being built with private money.
00:21:23.440 --> 00:21:29.839
And so um that really uh gave NACE the opportunity to to grow uh significantly.
00:21:30.559 --> 00:21:37.279
Um you mentioned NURC and and the regulations associated associated with the 2003 blackout.
00:21:37.759 --> 00:21:56.880
Um, you know, one of the areas that that NACE really started diving into um when those regulations became enforceable was the Nurk space because there weren't people that had expertise uh uh in that space, particularly related to independent power producers.
00:21:56.960 --> 00:22:10.960
And so we we created a team that that uh Um but you know, we we created program documents and and and consulting uh to support our own fleet and then we thought, hey, you know, this is something that the rest of the industry needs as well.
00:22:11.119 --> 00:22:16.319
And so we've we've grown that business over the years um uh to what it is today.
00:22:16.559 --> 00:22:17.039
Yeah.
00:22:17.920 --> 00:22:21.359
Going back to when NASA really entered the picture, yeah.
00:22:21.440 --> 00:22:24.559
Um how much has changed since then to now?
00:22:25.039 --> 00:22:34.559
You know, in the 80s, uh there was kind of slowdown of what we're doing with nuclear, um, moving more, you know, back towards coal.
00:22:34.640 --> 00:22:38.240
Um, and then really the nineties and two thousands kind of things shook up there.
00:22:38.480 --> 00:22:38.720
Yep.
00:22:38.960 --> 00:22:42.559
So yeah, tell me about how has NACE been involved in that?
00:22:42.720 --> 00:22:45.759
What what's what's been our thing along the way?
00:22:46.079 --> 00:23:02.319
Yeah, um, so you know, as you mentioned, or as we've discussed, the the the change from kind of coal to gas happened because uh uh one environmental regulations, two uh gas was a relatively cheap and stable uh fuel source.
00:23:02.640 --> 00:23:13.680
Um and so those plants because they were cheaper and easier to build, uh uh drove more private money into the space.
00:23:14.000 --> 00:23:23.920
And so we've grown, not that we haven't operated every type of technology except nuclear, but we've grown significantly from the growth in in gas.
00:23:24.559 --> 00:23:35.519
And um and so that that has been uh probably our the primary uh type of plants that NASA's operated over over the decades.
00:23:35.680 --> 00:23:46.400
I think you know we operate 250 plants a day, probably um 150 of them plus are gas-based, either combined cycle or or simple cycle.
00:23:46.480 --> 00:23:48.799
Um so that's where we're we're very, very strong.
00:23:49.200 --> 00:23:49.519
Yeah.
00:23:49.759 --> 00:24:01.440
And technologically, it wasn't until they found a way to extract that natural gas um in the 90s, 2000s that it became so economically viable.
00:24:01.839 --> 00:24:04.559
Yeah, you're talking about fracking, right, and the fracking revolution.
00:24:04.720 --> 00:24:12.319
And we found we we could extract gas in other parts of the country, you know, as opposed to just West Texas, for example, and and eastern New Mexico.
00:24:12.720 --> 00:24:18.480
And my understanding was we were going primarily from importing to now we're primarily exporting.
00:24:18.640 --> 00:24:19.039
Yep.
00:24:19.279 --> 00:24:30.240
And so it's really changed our economic uh, you know, in terms of energy production, in terms of the grid, um, how it's divided up has changed dramatically.
00:24:30.319 --> 00:24:30.559
Yep.
00:24:30.720 --> 00:24:35.680
Uh and uh, you know, also the benefit of reduced CO2 emissions.
00:24:35.839 --> 00:24:36.079
Yep.
00:24:36.240 --> 00:24:38.880
Um so a lot's changed since then.
00:24:39.039 --> 00:24:49.200
And um now getting into 2010s and and modern day uh renewables are kind of coming online and and they're much cheaper uh than uh they used to be.
00:24:49.279 --> 00:24:55.279
And so my understanding is now up to what 90% of new energy being added to the grid is renewable.
00:24:55.440 --> 00:24:55.680
Yep.
00:24:55.839 --> 00:24:57.119
Uh tell me a bit about that.
00:24:57.519 --> 00:24:57.839
Yeah.
00:24:58.000 --> 00:25:11.359
Um, so uh kind of as you mentioned, um wind and solar in particular um for for decades were very expensive relative to the amount of power output that you got.
00:25:11.839 --> 00:25:25.279
Um and starting around 2010, 2015 time frame, um they the the the cost for installation uh and and operations and maintenance of those went down significantly.
00:25:25.839 --> 00:25:33.200
And so the these days the the cheapest form of generation is probably solar.
00:25:33.519 --> 00:25:39.839
The downside of solar, of course, is that the sun doesn't shine all the time and and we need electricity all the time.
00:25:40.079 --> 00:25:51.440
Um and so right now um uh in in California and in Texas in particular, um a lot of solar is being installed in conjunction with battery storage.
00:25:51.519 --> 00:25:51.759
Right.
00:25:52.000 --> 00:26:08.400
So that when the sun is shining, you can you can charge up your battery, and then when you need it, you know, overnight, or at least during the the periods when people are still using it into the evenings, you can discharge those batteries and you don't you don't have that huge drop-off in in generation capacity.
00:26:08.720 --> 00:26:16.400
So, you know, NASA's played a role and we we we've operated and and done remote operation of of solar battery storage, wind.
00:26:16.480 --> 00:26:21.279
Um, and and particularly in wind, we've been in that space for over 20 years.
00:26:21.519 --> 00:26:25.920
Um even before it was as cost efficient as it is now.
00:26:27.119 --> 00:26:38.559
Yeah, I think there is this belief of like, hey, we just need to shut down all the coal plants, we need to shut down all the natural gas plants, and the reality is a little bit more nuanced than that.
00:26:38.720 --> 00:26:54.960
I think um even as we add much more renewables to the grid, like you said, the the gap um, particularly on whether the wind is blowing or the sun is shining, uh, needs to be filled by batteries, that technology is maturing still.
00:26:55.279 --> 00:26:58.079
Um so there's some investment.
00:26:58.160 --> 00:27:00.079
Uh it seems like that's that's growing.
00:27:00.240 --> 00:27:02.880
The investment of new solar plants going in.
00:27:03.039 --> 00:27:05.279
Many of them do have the battery technology.
00:27:05.519 --> 00:27:05.839
Yep.
00:27:06.079 --> 00:27:08.640
Um, so there's a bit of a gap there still.
00:27:09.039 --> 00:27:12.400
And uh it's kind of an all hands-on-deck approach, I think.
00:27:12.640 --> 00:27:17.920
Yeah, I mean, I I think last time we we talked, you know, I I kind of mentioned I'm an all of the above person.
00:27:18.000 --> 00:27:19.200
I think we need it all.
00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:30.960
Um, and I think that the economics will drive the economics of each geographical region within the North American grid will will drive what type of generation makes the most sense there.
00:27:31.200 --> 00:27:37.200
Um, you know, you're not gonna really want to install solar up in Alaska, it's not gonna help you that much that much, you know.
00:27:37.519 --> 00:27:47.759
Um and so it's just finding the right solution um for whatever the problem is in in the area that you're in is really important.
00:27:47.920 --> 00:27:57.279
And you know, I don't I don't agree with we should shut down all the all the the uh uh the gas and and coal-fired power plants.
00:27:57.359 --> 00:28:03.279
I think we we need them and and I don't know how long we'll need them for, but it's at least a decade, sure.
00:28:03.440 --> 00:28:05.359
Um if not much, much longer than that.
00:28:05.519 --> 00:28:10.400
Um I'd love to see we we touched on nuclear before, and I think last time we talked, we also talked about nuclear.
00:28:10.559 --> 00:28:21.920
I'd love to see more nuclear come on, either whether it's small modular reactors or even the large uh you know, 1500 megawatt uh uh type solutions that we already have implemented.
00:28:22.079 --> 00:28:30.559
Uh I just think it's you know it's expensive to build, but it's a very low cost relative to how much output you get uh over the long term.
00:28:30.640 --> 00:28:35.200
And these plants now, uh many of them have been licensed for 80 years.
00:28:35.440 --> 00:28:42.400
So you, you know, you yeah, you may spend a couple billion dollars, but you get 80 years of very low cost, very stable generation.
00:28:42.480 --> 00:28:42.559
Right.
00:28:42.720 --> 00:28:45.680
And you only need to take an outage every 18 to 24 months.
00:28:45.839 --> 00:28:48.319
Well, and otherwise they're just on the grid producing constantly.
00:28:48.640 --> 00:28:49.599
Yeah, always on.
00:28:49.759 --> 00:28:50.079
Yeah.
00:28:50.480 --> 00:28:54.720
And it's yeah, I mean, the the benefits are are massive.
00:28:55.039 --> 00:29:00.880
Uh the in the initial investment, the you know, some of those time frames, some of the regulation involved.
00:29:01.200 --> 00:29:02.880
Um, it gets more complicated.
00:29:03.039 --> 00:29:11.359
And when you look at the abundance of natural gas, when you look at the ability to create a generating station for natural gas, much easier.
00:29:11.519 --> 00:29:11.759
Yep.
00:29:11.920 --> 00:29:16.640
Um, and then looking at the future is is these data centers.
00:29:16.799 --> 00:29:17.119
Yep.
00:29:17.279 --> 00:29:22.720
Um, they're what 5% of what we're using on the grid currently, but we expect that to grow quite a bit.
00:29:22.880 --> 00:29:24.240
How much is that going to grow?
00:29:24.319 --> 00:29:24.799
Do we know?
00:29:25.200 --> 00:29:34.400
Yeah, I mean, by by 2035, the projections are that it'll triple um and so it could be up to 15% of the load growth.
00:29:34.480 --> 00:29:50.559
Now, one of the interesting things has been that um because the what's called the cues uh within these different uh uh market regions are so long that data center developers are deciding to do what's called behind the meter generation.
00:29:50.640 --> 00:29:57.119
They're just building power plants not connected to the grid in any way to power just the data centers.
00:29:57.440 --> 00:29:57.759
Right.
00:29:58.000 --> 00:29:59.680
And so completely isolated.
00:30:00.079 --> 00:30:09.119
You know, that that concept means that that they might be able to build much, much faster now than than kind of we've traditionally seen.
00:30:09.680 --> 00:30:16.400
Uh the challenge still is getting turbines or or getting reciprocating engines.
00:30:16.480 --> 00:30:21.119
What whatever you want to use to power um it's sold out for five years.
00:30:21.279 --> 00:30:21.599
Right.
00:30:21.759 --> 00:30:32.640
Um if you if you were to order a uh an H class or a G class machine right now from GE, Mitsubishi, Siemens, um, you wouldn't get it till 2031 at the soonest.
00:30:33.039 --> 00:30:36.319
And so um so are we in a holding pattern right now?
00:30:36.640 --> 00:30:42.480
We're just the you know, within NACE, we we have our engineered performance team and they're finding turbines around the world.
00:30:42.640 --> 00:30:42.799
Yeah.
00:30:43.119 --> 00:30:49.039
Unused or used turbines um that we can bring and install quicker.
00:30:49.200 --> 00:30:49.519
Right.
00:30:49.599 --> 00:31:00.960
Um so we've found units that are 50 years old that have been in layup for 30 years, and you know, we're gonna make them usable again and install those uh for our data center clients.
00:31:01.200 --> 00:31:04.480
Um so it it we're we're definitely not at a standstill.
00:31:04.640 --> 00:31:11.359
Um, but we're not moving as fast as as you know, particularly the the Googles and the Metas and the Amazons would like.
00:31:11.519 --> 00:31:11.759
Yeah.
00:31:11.920 --> 00:31:14.400
They're not used to waiting, they're used to spending money and it just happens to be.
00:31:21.119 --> 00:31:23.119
And some of these things are just logistics.
00:31:24.000 --> 00:31:28.799
You know, we can't just make a turbine appear out of thin air.
00:31:29.119 --> 00:31:29.200
Right.
00:31:29.279 --> 00:31:34.799
And we're seeing uh uh customers or potential customers go to smaller and smaller units.
00:31:34.960 --> 00:31:45.279
So instead of installing one 500 megawatt combined cycle type of type of facility, they're buying you know, a hundred five megawatt units.
00:31:45.440 --> 00:31:49.519
Now that's a it's a maintenance nightmare, but you can get those units faster.
00:31:49.599 --> 00:31:49.759
Right.
00:31:49.920 --> 00:31:55.039
You know, you can go down to Home Depot and grab a 500 KW uh generator right now.
00:31:55.200 --> 00:31:55.519
Right.
00:31:55.759 --> 00:31:58.000
You just need a lot of those to power a data center.
00:31:58.240 --> 00:31:58.720
Yeah.
00:31:59.039 --> 00:32:07.599
You know, some might ask, well, you know, why not invest in some of the renewables, like do a solar plant and battery storage and that that sort of thing.
00:32:07.680 --> 00:32:11.839
And my understanding is may not be reliable as they need.
00:32:12.079 --> 00:32:15.119
It may not be economical as they desire.
00:32:15.279 --> 00:32:15.680
Yep.
00:32:15.920 --> 00:32:20.880
And I've heard a lot of talk around the small module, modular reactors.
00:32:21.039 --> 00:32:32.880
Um, maybe the branding gets a boost because there's not explicitly nuclear in the so I wonder if that's maybe an element, maybe it being modular, being small, it feels like very contained.
00:32:32.960 --> 00:32:33.279
Yeah.
00:32:33.440 --> 00:32:35.200
Um, I mean, is that the future?
00:32:35.279 --> 00:32:37.519
Do you see uh we've broken ground on some.
00:32:37.599 --> 00:32:38.319
What is there?
00:32:38.400 --> 00:32:41.839
There's one in Wyoming, there's a couple others percolating around.
00:32:41.920 --> 00:32:48.880
But yeah, there's one up at Idaho National Lab, I think, and they're they're installing one at uh one of the utilities up in Ontario at the moment.
00:32:49.200 --> 00:32:51.440
And some of them are up to what, 300 megawatts.
00:32:51.920 --> 00:32:52.079
Yeah.
00:32:52.160 --> 00:32:53.839
I think the one seem that small.
00:32:54.000 --> 00:32:58.319
No, I mean it's small relative to you know the traditional nuclear.
00:32:58.559 --> 00:32:58.960
Yeah.
00:32:59.119 --> 00:33:01.599
Um, I think there's a lot of potential there.
00:33:02.160 --> 00:33:13.519
As they've gotten larger though, I worry that you're losing that modularization concept where you can just almost like a trailer home where you can just punch out a bunch of them and ship them to wherever you want.
00:33:13.599 --> 00:33:13.839
Yeah.
00:33:14.079 --> 00:33:21.440
You know, at 300 megawatts, there's still a lot of customization that needs to be done during during the construction phase.
00:33:21.599 --> 00:33:27.359
Whereas, you know, maybe maybe those smaller kind of initially we were talking about 50 megawatt.
00:33:27.519 --> 00:33:32.079
You might be able to, you know, build those at a factory and ship them around the around the world.
00:33:32.240 --> 00:33:32.559
Yeah.
00:33:32.799 --> 00:33:38.240
Um, so I I do worry that we lose some of that modularization at these larger sizes.
00:33:38.400 --> 00:33:47.599
It's more attractive uh for people building them because obviously the that that larger power output, but um I I wonder about that piece of it.
00:33:47.680 --> 00:33:55.359
Yeah because if you're doing 300 and you have to do all that customization, why not just go to the 1.2 to 1.5 gig, you know, traditional.
00:33:55.759 --> 00:34:04.240
Yeah, and I saw, you know, Microsoft is they they purchased the uh reactor of the three mile island.
00:34:04.319 --> 00:34:07.519
Um yeah, they they purchased the output of of that to restart it.
00:34:07.920 --> 00:34:08.000
Right.
00:34:08.079 --> 00:34:08.239
Yep.
00:34:08.480 --> 00:34:12.960
So what 2028, it's back online and exactly um 900 megawatts right there.
00:34:13.199 --> 00:34:20.000
It seems sort of like uh inflection point historically, you know, because it was a big moment that it got shut down in the first place.
00:34:20.159 --> 00:34:29.760
And um, you know, historically speaking, the safeguards in place at the time did work the way we wanted them to.
00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:31.440
Um just very scary.
00:34:31.760 --> 00:34:32.000
Right.
00:34:32.239 --> 00:34:36.719
Which yeah, obviously the worst case scenario is what we we fear ultimately.
00:34:36.960 --> 00:34:38.480
But um the Chernobyl.
00:34:39.039 --> 00:34:40.000
And that's a worst case scenario.
00:34:40.239 --> 00:34:40.480
Sure.
00:34:40.559 --> 00:34:40.639
Yeah.
00:34:40.960 --> 00:34:41.679
Yeah, exactly.
00:34:41.840 --> 00:34:46.239
And um, you know, then there's of course the argument of well, what about the the waste?
00:34:46.400 --> 00:34:47.199
What do we do with that?
00:34:47.440 --> 00:34:58.880
You know, and um in my mind, I think of that as something that's you know could be kicked down the road a bit, you know, they're probably fine in their casks outside the facility for now.
00:34:59.119 --> 00:35:20.800
Um but but yeah, I mean, I think at the end of the day, the uh complexity um stuff coming online, the next five years, it seems like these small modular, excuse me, small modular reactors will be a big part of these data centers, especially if they they grow, you know, triple in the next 10 years.
00:35:20.960 --> 00:35:21.360
Yeah.
00:35:21.519 --> 00:35:23.920
Um we're gonna need a lot of power.
00:35:24.000 --> 00:35:24.480
Yeah.
00:35:24.719 --> 00:35:31.840
And the idea that we're gonna be shutting down plants doesn't seem likely in the near term.
00:35:32.159 --> 00:35:36.239
Yeah, I mean the the economics are still very challenging for for coal plants.
00:35:36.480 --> 00:35:36.719
Sure.
00:35:36.960 --> 00:35:52.800
Um, and I think that um that's probably the biggest like we want that generation, but it cost twice as much to make a megawatt at a depending on where it is, what type of fuel, et cetera, et cetera.
00:35:52.960 --> 00:35:57.599
But you know, it can tw cost twice as much to make a megawatt at a coal plant than at a gas plant.
00:35:57.760 --> 00:35:58.000
Right.
00:35:58.159 --> 00:36:09.760
And and that's where it gets hard to justify, whether whether you're at a utility and you're passing the cost off to your rate payers like you and I, um, or if you're private equity and you're looking at a return on your investment.
00:36:09.920 --> 00:36:10.320
Right.
00:36:10.480 --> 00:36:15.440
Um when you double the price per megawatt, it's just much fewer days you can run and make money.
00:36:15.599 --> 00:36:15.840
Right.
00:36:16.000 --> 00:36:22.159
And coal plants aren't good at sitting there cold cold iron and and starting up in a pinch.
00:36:22.320 --> 00:36:23.679
That's just not how they were built.
00:36:24.000 --> 00:36:24.559
Yeah.
00:36:24.880 --> 00:36:38.559
Looking at the transmission lines, I think something that is not understood fully is if we do move a lot of our generation to renewables, we have to get that energy elsewhere.
00:36:38.719 --> 00:36:42.800
And a lot of times these are located um in not very populous places.
00:36:42.960 --> 00:36:43.360
Right.
00:36:43.599 --> 00:36:45.840
And so that's a whole other challenge.
00:36:46.079 --> 00:36:47.199
Some we've talked about before.
00:36:47.360 --> 00:36:47.519
Yep.
00:36:47.599 --> 00:36:47.760
Yep.
00:36:47.920 --> 00:36:49.440
How does that play into all of this?
00:36:49.840 --> 00:37:02.480
Yeah, I mean, the the where we have, particularly for wind generation, where where the wind blows uh the hardest and uh the most consistently are in parts of the country that very few people live.
00:37:02.800 --> 00:37:08.559
And so um, you know, there's a 3,500 megawatt wind farm proposed in Wyoming.
00:37:08.800 --> 00:37:14.159
Well, Wyoming has a population of 500,000 people, 600,000 people, you know, very, very few.
00:37:14.320 --> 00:37:20.960
And so we got to transmit that to uh to places where people live, Texas, California, etc.
00:37:21.519 --> 00:37:27.440
And and building a transmission line uh in the US today just takes a really long time.
00:37:27.519 --> 00:37:33.360
We've we've been involved with several, uh one of which took over 20 years, one of which took 15 years.
00:37:33.679 --> 00:37:41.519
Um and you know, we were talking about the the the load growth of data centers in a 10-year window here.
00:37:43.519 --> 00:37:49.760
That taking 20 years to build a transmission line is just not going to be realistic to meet the need.
00:37:50.239 --> 00:37:52.719
Is it just the complexity that we're at now?
00:37:52.960 --> 00:38:04.480
Because I imagine the 30s and 40s there was not you know, there weren't a lot of people to protest these lines being run across the country, and the need was obvious.
00:38:04.800 --> 00:38:05.119
Yeah.
00:38:05.280 --> 00:38:14.400
So I mean, I think it's a combination of regulatory hurdles, um, uh policy changes uh with with state governments.
00:38:14.559 --> 00:38:20.559
Um it's different in every state, and and even within certain states, there's differences uh in different counties.
00:38:20.960 --> 00:38:24.559
Um and then there's there's landowners, you know.
00:38:24.639 --> 00:38:31.599
You you're building a power plant, generally you can buy a hundred acres or fifty acres of land and it's yours.
00:38:32.159 --> 00:38:40.800
Um when you're running a uh several hundred mile uh transmission line, you're not gonna buy all the land, number one.
00:38:41.199 --> 00:38:52.559
And number two, you have to get permission from each of those landowners to have a a project that's in the middle of their pasture, for example, for 50 years with a transmission tower.
00:38:52.719 --> 00:38:53.119
Right.
00:38:53.360 --> 00:39:01.760
Um some some folks see it as an additional revenue source and and they're grateful for it, but others are like, you know, not on my land.
00:39:01.840 --> 00:39:06.960
You know, my my grandfather's grandfather had this this property and I don't want to change it.
00:39:07.199 --> 00:39:09.119
The NIMBY's yes, exactly.
00:39:10.159 --> 00:39:21.519
You know, uh and not to make it, you know, too political, but of course the there's always concern related to emissions, CO2, these types of things.
00:39:21.840 --> 00:39:29.519
The reality at this point in time is even if the US gets to zero, the majority of emissions are coming out of Asia.
00:39:30.400 --> 00:39:36.159
And yeah, I I guess I wonder what what does the future look like there?
00:39:36.320 --> 00:39:51.119
I mean, we have limited control over how other countries run, and and I think there's an argument being made that we were able to industrialize off of cheap, you know, fuel sources like coal, like natural gas.
00:39:51.360 --> 00:39:54.719
Shouldn't these other developing countries have the same opportunity?
00:39:55.280 --> 00:40:03.440
Um so there's a lot of different elements at play that it just isn't, it's not as simple as let's just shut down this plant and it's all fixed.
00:40:03.599 --> 00:40:03.760
Right.
00:40:04.000 --> 00:40:10.719
You know, there's the industrial processes that make up a large uh amount of the emissions, and those are very difficult to control.
00:40:10.960 --> 00:40:11.519
They are, yeah.
00:40:11.760 --> 00:40:24.880
And so I mean, I know that it's often sort of condensed into this renewables good, conventional bad, but it's really a much more nuanced picture than that.
00:40:25.199 --> 00:40:26.400
Yeah, no, I agree.
00:40:26.559 --> 00:40:35.280
Um, you know, it it's interesting, you know, particularly in China, where they have been a developing economy for for 50 years, let's let's call it.
00:40:35.440 --> 00:40:45.440
Um they're building more coal plants than anybody than the rest of the world combined, but they're also building more solar and transmission than the rest of the world combined.
00:40:45.519 --> 00:40:45.840
Yep.
00:40:46.000 --> 00:40:50.320
And so they're building that they're they've basically embraced the all of the above strategy.
00:40:50.400 --> 00:40:54.400
They're building everything, they're building more nuclear than any than than anybody else.
00:40:54.559 --> 00:40:59.039
They don't have the abundance of natural resources that we have, so they're not really building that much gas.
00:40:59.119 --> 00:40:59.360
Right.
00:40:59.519 --> 00:41:03.599
Or the gas they're building, they're actually firing it on liquid fuel like diesel.
00:41:04.159 --> 00:41:08.559
Um and so it is it is an interesting uh conundrum.
00:41:08.639 --> 00:41:16.719
Uh, but as I mentioned, I think our our approach in North America and particularly in the US needs to be hey, we just need more power right now.
00:41:16.880 --> 00:41:22.800
And and so we can we can add emissions controls on the back end, which is what we've been doing for decades.
00:41:22.960 --> 00:41:23.360
Right.
00:41:23.599 --> 00:41:26.239
Um and that's probably worthwhile.
00:41:26.639 --> 00:41:33.679
The reality in my mind, it seems like carbon capture is gonna be a huge part of the future.
00:41:33.840 --> 00:41:39.760
Um, maybe something that doesn't get as much attention and will require a lot of energy.
00:41:40.239 --> 00:41:45.119
And maybe it's not until we have commercial fusion that really that becomes viable.
00:41:45.519 --> 00:41:46.079
Sure, yeah.
00:41:46.320 --> 00:41:53.679
Um so it's commercial fusion would uh make all these other sources of energy moot.
00:41:53.840 --> 00:41:57.440
I mean, you just wouldn't need anything else if we can if we can commercialize that.
00:41:57.840 --> 00:42:01.920
They pull the uh primary ingredients they need from seawater, right?
00:42:02.239 --> 00:42:02.719
Yes, exactly.
00:42:02.960 --> 00:42:07.199
And so it's the most abundant resource on the planet.
00:42:07.360 --> 00:42:09.199
It's I mean, we have more ocean than anything else.
00:42:09.440 --> 00:42:09.920
Yes, yes.
00:42:10.320 --> 00:42:13.119
And I think a single glass could power a city.
00:42:13.280 --> 00:42:13.440
Yeah.
00:42:13.920 --> 00:42:14.320
Something like that.
00:42:14.639 --> 00:42:17.440
So you're creating a small star.
00:42:17.840 --> 00:42:18.159
Yeah.
00:42:18.320 --> 00:42:26.880
You know, that we're essentially and and they've what a few years ago showed the proof of concept that it they can get there.
00:42:27.039 --> 00:42:30.559
Um although it's you know, the joke is it's always thirty years away.
00:42:30.800 --> 00:42:31.119
Exactly.
00:42:31.440 --> 00:42:36.639
Um it seems like it's probably closer to 1015, maybe to uh something commercial.
00:42:36.800 --> 00:42:37.119
Yep.
00:42:37.280 --> 00:42:45.760
Um yeah, the proof of concept, you know, it it it worked to create power, but it took more power to to create that power than we got out of it.
00:42:45.920 --> 00:42:46.079
Yeah.
00:42:46.239 --> 00:42:51.519
Um but yeah, I mean there's there's two places up here uh just north of Seattle in Everett, two different companies.
00:42:51.599 --> 00:42:56.400
One's backed by by uh Bill Gates, and I can't remember who the other's backed by.
00:42:56.559 --> 00:43:00.719
That you know it it seems promising, and I'm very hopeful.
00:43:00.880 --> 00:43:05.519
It's just even that, even if it's 10 years out, we got a lot of work to do before we get there.
00:43:05.760 --> 00:43:06.320
Yeah.
00:43:06.639 --> 00:43:11.280
And you know, right now it's in the billions of dollars of funding.
00:43:11.440 --> 00:43:11.679
Yep.
00:43:11.840 --> 00:43:25.280
Um, I imagine when there's a little more proof when they they sh you know can create a small generating station that then a lot of you know that private equity will flood into and oh yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:43:25.760 --> 00:43:31.039
So I I think the moral of the story at this point is there's a lot of possibilities in the future.
00:43:31.119 --> 00:43:31.360
Yep.
00:43:31.519 --> 00:43:37.119
And it seems like the current need is the top of mind, the thing that's the most pressing.
00:43:37.280 --> 00:43:37.519
Yep.
00:43:37.679 --> 00:43:44.320
And uh, you know, that's human history, it seems like and that's the history of the grid is solving problems as they come up.
00:43:44.480 --> 00:43:44.800
Yep.
00:43:44.960 --> 00:43:48.480
So and the current problem is this load demand, just right.
00:43:48.639 --> 00:43:53.519
Needing more flat for for thirty years ish and now which is kind of amazing.
00:43:54.559 --> 00:43:55.199
Like crazy.
00:43:55.440 --> 00:43:55.760
Yeah.
00:43:55.920 --> 00:43:59.679
Yeah, and and seeing some of these new innovations with you know.
00:44:00.239 --> 00:44:06.000
these AI platforms and LLMs and you know Claude and um you know Chat GPT.
00:44:06.159 --> 00:44:07.280
Yeah it it's amazing.
00:44:07.360 --> 00:44:10.320
And we don't necessarily know how things will shake out in the next five years.
00:44:10.480 --> 00:44:13.440
So it seems like there's a lot of unknowns right now.
00:44:13.760 --> 00:44:22.239
It seems like the thing that people are trusting in right now is to invest their money in the companies that are you know on the the forefront of the technology.
00:44:22.400 --> 00:44:36.079
But um even looking at a company like Deep Seek in um you know 2025 late 2024, 2025, um they showed that they were able to train their model for much less right you know money, much less energy.
00:44:36.400 --> 00:44:38.079
Yeah much less compute compute power.
00:44:38.159 --> 00:44:43.360
Yeah right and so the question is you know how much energy are we going to need?
00:44:43.440 --> 00:44:44.719
We don't it's hard to say.
00:44:44.960 --> 00:44:45.199
Right.
00:44:45.280 --> 00:44:51.199
You know more now that the chat bots are talking to each other you know how much how much power is that going to use over time.
00:44:51.360 --> 00:44:52.480
I mean it's really hard to know.
00:44:52.800 --> 00:44:55.280
But but then maybe they'll solve our fusion problem.
00:44:55.760 --> 00:45:17.360
Maybe yeah maybe they will just have them talk to each other solve that without we need to get somebody in here that uh is on the ground floor working on you know that cutting edge yeah exactly um yeah I I hopefully you know for the listeners this is giving them a a little bit of an overview of where we're at where we've come from it's a complicated story.
00:45:17.679 --> 00:45:27.039
It is it's uh it's not as simple as uh you know headlines tend to make it out to be and uh I think that NACE is in an interesting position.
00:45:27.280 --> 00:45:39.440
We don't own any of these assets we're we're able to go where the industry leads us and um so I think that we have a unique voice in that is trying to see the forest through from the trees a little bit.
00:45:41.360 --> 00:45:59.760
Yeah so Alan thanks for all your expertise and thoughts um no problem you know uh I I think there's a lot more to talk about but I think hopefully uh this hasn't been too much information but I feel like we've given a pretty good rundown from really inception to modern day.
00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:00.320
Yep.
00:46:00.559 --> 00:46:09.599
And I I like your uh your analysis that hey we've it seems like every step along the way here has been an adjustment to a problem.
00:46:10.000 --> 00:46:13.199
And the problem right now is different than it has been.
00:46:13.360 --> 00:46:15.920
So we will adjust as an industry we will adjust.
00:46:16.159 --> 00:46:18.960
Yeah and it's not something we could have predicted five, ten years ago.
00:46:19.280 --> 00:46:19.679
Exactly.
00:46:20.079 --> 00:46:21.840
And who knows where we'll be in five years.
00:46:22.400 --> 00:46:24.400
So you know looking forward to the ride.
00:46:24.880 --> 00:46:28.960
I think we'll figure it out I think we will we will humans are pretty resilient.
00:46:29.440 --> 00:46:32.000
So um but yeah appreciate your time.
00:46:32.239 --> 00:46:33.519
Absolutely
00:00:00.239 --> 00:00:04.400
People would build generating stations and then just run wires to their customers.
00:00:04.639 --> 00:00:08.800
So you'd have a a telephone pole with, you know, dozens, if not hundreds of wires.
00:00:09.039 --> 00:00:21.440
And to get away from that and to uh enhance the economic output for the country as a whole, uh, the utility structure was created originally in in Chicago.
00:00:21.600 --> 00:00:26.079
And so instead of having you know hundreds of wires on a pole, you'd have one.
00:00:26.320 --> 00:00:32.799
And that would feed every single house or every single farm or every single factory on that same line.
00:00:33.119 --> 00:00:49.759
Our ability to create utilities and to regulate them back at that time in particular when we needed to invest and grow, both how much generation we had and where we were where we were delivering power was really instrumental in allowing the grid to become as complex as it is today.
00:00:50.079 --> 00:00:53.920
The world of energy and the technology shaping it.
00:00:54.159 --> 00:00:59.119
I'm Josh Tate, and this is Between Two Turbines.
00:01:13.359 --> 00:01:15.040
Alan, welcome back to the show.
00:01:15.359 --> 00:01:16.159
I'm glad to be back.
00:01:16.400 --> 00:01:16.640
Yeah.
00:01:16.799 --> 00:01:27.920
Well, today what I wanted to do was take kind of a brief history of how we got here, how the grid um became the grid, the way we know it now.
00:01:28.079 --> 00:01:35.040
It seems like a lot of things are marked by uh, you know, problems along the way, and it's solving those problems.
00:01:35.120 --> 00:01:37.040
And and now we're at a very complex system.
00:01:37.120 --> 00:01:41.519
I've heard some people say it's the largest machine in the entire world.
00:01:42.159 --> 00:01:43.280
Largest and most complex.
00:01:43.599 --> 00:01:43.920
Yeah.
00:01:44.079 --> 00:01:52.640
And so I think, especially for me, um, and and for NACE and for people related to NASE, there's a lot to kind of understand.
00:01:52.799 --> 00:01:58.000
I wanted to talk through in broad strokes where we came from, where we're at today.
00:01:58.159 --> 00:02:11.599
And so going back, you know, way back in time, we're talking Thomas Edison, Nicola Tesla, and you know, back in the day, we we really didn't understand the possibilities.
00:02:11.680 --> 00:02:18.479
And and I almost think if they could see where we're at now, they may think it's utopian in a lot of ways.
00:02:18.639 --> 00:02:24.159
And um just light uh, you know, in and of itself was such a big problem.
00:02:24.319 --> 00:02:29.120
We lived in darkness for most of human history, and now we can get a light anywhere.
00:02:29.280 --> 00:02:29.520
Yep.
00:02:29.680 --> 00:02:40.159
And so going back to you know, those early days, um, that first generating station in in New York City, uh, it only powered 85 people.
00:02:40.319 --> 00:02:40.800
Yep.
00:02:41.120 --> 00:02:42.960
And it was on DC power.
00:02:43.360 --> 00:02:50.879
So starting out, I mean, I'd I'd like to hear your commentary on on where we were at on the DC AC side.
00:02:50.960 --> 00:02:53.039
There was kind of this war going on.
00:02:53.360 --> 00:02:58.719
And and and so yeah, Edison, more of a businessman than than Tesla.
00:02:58.800 --> 00:03:01.759
It seems like he was more focused on the physics, the science of it.
00:03:02.000 --> 00:03:02.080
Yep.
00:03:02.240 --> 00:03:03.680
So yeah, what are your thoughts there?
00:03:04.159 --> 00:03:12.960
Yeah, I mean, that those, you know, back in the late 1800s when when um kind of we started with with central generating plants were an interesting time.
00:03:13.199 --> 00:03:26.879
And one of the things I think about a lot is that, you know, of course, Edison had the first one, that Pearl Street station, which I think you alluded to, um, and it powered 80 homes and proof of concept.
00:03:27.120 --> 00:03:29.120
And he just ran wires to those homes.
00:03:29.360 --> 00:03:37.199
So uh there were some telephone or telegraph poles at the time, and he just put wires on those and ran them to his customers.
00:03:37.360 --> 00:03:37.680
Yeah.
00:03:38.080 --> 00:03:47.120
And then as other folks saw, hey, that's a way I could make money, they built their plants and then ran wires to their customers' homes.
00:03:47.439 --> 00:03:47.599
Yeah.
00:03:47.680 --> 00:03:53.280
So like London, Chicago, some of these bigger cities, but still it was just the city center.
00:03:53.439 --> 00:03:53.680
Yeah.
00:03:53.840 --> 00:04:00.879
Um, maybe kind of the elite class that that got access to it or some of these businesses like JP Morgan, some of some of these others.
00:04:01.199 --> 00:04:02.319
We've come a long way.
00:04:02.479 --> 00:04:02.719
Yeah.
00:04:02.960 --> 00:04:13.840
It scaled up and and you look at uh the uh Chicago World's Fair, there's kind of the first place that I think Westinghouse and Tesla kind of um showed out really.
00:04:13.919 --> 00:04:14.080
Yeah.
00:04:14.240 --> 00:04:17.920
And and looking back at some of these old images, you can see them.
00:04:18.000 --> 00:04:23.199
It's it's like it looks modern in a in a sense, but you know, it's the 1800s.
00:04:23.279 --> 00:04:33.199
And I I could imagine what I've heard is some reports people would weep when they got there is they've just never seen um, you know, such a large area just being fully lit.
00:04:33.439 --> 00:04:34.319
Fully lit, yes.
00:04:34.560 --> 00:04:40.240
And I think when we think about electricity, um, initially the the first thought was light.
00:04:40.319 --> 00:04:40.560
Yeah.
00:04:40.720 --> 00:04:41.600
How do we get light?
00:04:41.680 --> 00:04:44.560
How do we become productive in dark hours?
00:04:44.720 --> 00:04:44.959
Yep.
00:04:45.120 --> 00:04:48.240
And so it's it's changed our civilization dramatically.
00:04:48.399 --> 00:04:59.439
I mean, yeah, um, you know, not only with modern tech, but just the ability to write and and do things by candlelight, you'd have to have the money to, you know, for gas lamps or for candles, et cetera.
00:04:59.759 --> 00:05:08.720
But now, you know, especially with like LEDs, we're not using that much electricity to to get this light that's um such a major utility to us.
00:05:08.959 --> 00:05:09.199
Yep.
00:05:09.600 --> 00:05:10.560
Do you have thoughts about that?
00:05:11.040 --> 00:05:16.959
Yeah, I mean, the the world would not be the what the world is today without electricity.
00:05:17.120 --> 00:05:31.519
And and certainly, you know, our country went through significant investment um kind of from the early 1900s, you know, through the 1940s to get electricity all across the country.
00:05:31.920 --> 00:05:43.040
Um there was a rural electrification effort in the 30s that um uh allowed us to bring power into the non-city centers.
00:05:43.759 --> 00:05:54.160
And um of course it was a public works type project, uh, and it was you know started during the Great Depression when we we needed to find jobs for for people.
00:05:54.399 --> 00:06:10.160
Um, but it was also uh I think very wise of our policymakers at the time to make that investment um and to create the opportunity for power to be all uh across the US.
00:06:10.800 --> 00:06:18.959
And you know, one of the interesting things I think about is is the utility structure that that uh was created.
00:06:19.120 --> 00:06:25.120
I was mentioning earlier that people would build generating stations and then just run wires to their customers.
00:06:25.360 --> 00:06:29.519
So you'd have a a telephone pole with you know dozens, if not hundreds of wires.
00:06:29.759 --> 00:06:42.319
And to get away from that and to uh enhance the economic output for the country as a whole, uh the utility structure was created originally in in Chicago.
00:06:43.040 --> 00:06:53.519
And and so what that allowed for was a utility would have a monopoly in a certain geographical region, but they'd have a capped amount of profit that they could make.
00:06:53.839 --> 00:07:06.720
And so instead of having you know hundreds of poles on a or hundreds of wires on a pole, you'd have one, and that would feed every single house or every single farm or every single factory on that same line.
00:07:07.279 --> 00:07:28.079
And so um that uh our ability to create utilities and to regulate them back at that time in particular when we needed to invest and grow, um uh both how much generation we had and where we were where were we delivering power was really instrumental in allowing the grid to become as complex as it is today.
00:07:28.399 --> 00:07:28.720
Yeah.
00:07:28.879 --> 00:07:34.160
And a lot of, you know, at the time these were all separate, you know, generating stations.
00:07:34.240 --> 00:07:36.879
They didn't have an idea of actually interconnecting any of this.
00:07:37.279 --> 00:07:37.600
Yep.
00:07:37.839 --> 00:07:45.439
And from my understanding, a lot of from the 30s, 40s, those transmission lines we still are using.
00:07:45.680 --> 00:07:46.160
Yes.
00:07:46.319 --> 00:07:47.360
That's pretty amazing.
00:07:47.519 --> 00:07:49.920
Yeah, it it's amazing and also a little scary.
00:07:50.000 --> 00:07:50.240
Yeah.
00:07:50.399 --> 00:07:54.399
Um, you know, some of those lines, um, you know, they need to be upgraded.
00:07:54.480 --> 00:08:08.800
We've had issues uh particularly in in the West with forest fires with some of the let's call them hundred-year-old, eighty-year-old lines that uh despite best efforts, haven't maybe been as maintained as well as they could have been.
00:08:09.040 --> 00:08:21.759
Um and so, you know, we did that investment then, but there's probably more investment that we need to do to to both upgrade the grid today and to enhance it.
00:08:22.160 --> 00:08:38.879
Um because you know, we need a lot more energy now than we ever have, and just leveraging those those old lines built, you know, between the 1930s and let's call it the 1970s isn't gonna get us where we need to be.
00:08:39.200 --> 00:08:39.440
Yeah.
00:08:39.519 --> 00:08:44.000
And it it seems like a lot of it was just we were solving problems as we went.
00:08:44.159 --> 00:08:44.559
Yep.
00:08:44.799 --> 00:08:54.000
And, you know, kind of going back to that era, Tesla, Westinghouse working together, really showing that AC as a proof of concept was gonna work.
00:08:54.080 --> 00:08:54.240
Yep.
00:08:54.399 --> 00:09:02.399
And it made sense as the um major way to transmit energy, yep, um, electricity around, you know, the United States and beyond.
00:09:02.480 --> 00:09:02.879
Yeah.
00:09:03.120 --> 00:09:10.720
And from there, they they made this uh first generating station, Niagara Falls, a like 11 megawatts.
00:09:10.960 --> 00:09:11.279
Huge.
00:09:11.440 --> 00:09:17.039
Um and even they I saw they they uh advertised it as 15,000 uh horsepower.
00:09:17.200 --> 00:09:17.440
Yep.
00:09:17.679 --> 00:09:28.159
And so um, you know, which you know, you look at some of these modern um, you know, hydroelectric like in in China, what is it, 23,000 megawatts, something like that.
00:09:28.399 --> 00:09:28.799
Exactly, yeah.
00:09:29.039 --> 00:09:36.320
So it's it pales in comparison, but it was this proof of concept, and they said, um, and this was all privately invested.
00:09:36.559 --> 00:09:36.720
Funded.
00:09:37.279 --> 00:09:40.879
It was not even the government wasn't ready to invest in that.
00:09:40.960 --> 00:09:48.879
And so this project was that proof of concept, and and from there it just the the station started to pro proliferate around the country.
00:09:48.960 --> 00:09:49.360
Yep.
00:09:49.679 --> 00:10:00.559
And yeah, I mean, that that process of of connecting the grid, um, you know, we started realizing we needed these turbines to be spinning at the same rate.
00:10:00.720 --> 00:10:00.960
Yep.
00:10:01.120 --> 00:10:03.440
Um tell tell me about some of that stuff.
00:10:03.759 --> 00:10:19.279
Yeah, I mean that so in those early days, let's call them early 1900s up through the the 40s, um, you know, the there wasn't really power systems as a as a uh course of study didn't really exist.
00:10:19.759 --> 00:10:35.759
And so a lot of the the learnings came out of industrial applications where they would have a lot of motors on a site and and they would see frequency imbalances or other things that were happening within uh the factory itself.
00:10:35.919 --> 00:10:51.519
And we took those learnings and said, okay, what if you spread that across a geographical area that's got a hundred generators and ten thousand uh interconnection points and and that kind of stuff, and that's a lot of where the theory around power systems came from.
00:10:51.919 --> 00:11:05.039
And so there, you know, some of the the there's physical geographical challenges, you know, our are we call it the grid, but there's really four separate grids in North America.
00:11:05.440 --> 00:11:09.840
Um there's the eastern and western separated basically by the Rockies.
00:11:10.320 --> 00:11:26.240
Uh Texas uh is a separate grid because they wanted to regulate themselves without any uh federal oversight, and then um uh Quebec uh similarly and Canada wanted to have a a separate grid for the same reason.
00:11:26.320 --> 00:11:30.559
So they they didn't have federal oversight from the Canadian uh side.
00:11:31.120 --> 00:11:48.080
And so um a lot of these these concepts like slowly came together um and the benefits of being interconnected with your neighbor utility outweighed the cost of the regulation of the regulation for it.
00:11:48.320 --> 00:12:04.960
And so um, you know, the one of the things that that I was heavily involved in here at NACE was our NURC team and and and you know, Nurk originally came out in the 60s after an outage that that occurred in the 60s and it was voluntary, right?
00:12:05.039 --> 00:12:06.799
It was only for utilities.
00:12:07.360 --> 00:12:10.879
We started to see the complexity was growing too fast, yep.
00:12:10.960 --> 00:12:18.559
Um there were problems that were possible that we didn't quite realize, and as we started interconnecting, it became even more complicated.
00:12:18.879 --> 00:12:19.039
Right.
00:12:19.200 --> 00:12:19.440
Right.
00:12:19.600 --> 00:12:26.639
Nobody expected you could lose 20, 30, 40 billion people from a single event until it happened.
00:12:26.960 --> 00:12:27.519
Yeah.
00:12:27.919 --> 00:12:52.960
And so, you know, going back to the when we first started creating these lines all across the US, um, and and to the first really major uh publicly funded, you know, looking at the hydroelectric, you know, for instance the Hoover Dam or Grand Coulee Dam um, massive projects, and this is uh, you know, right around World War II, this type of thing.
00:12:53.120 --> 00:13:03.919
Um the scale of the Hoover Dam being at you know uh 1300 megawatts and and looking at Niagara Falls at 11 megawatts.
00:13:04.320 --> 00:13:06.799
Um obviously that's been um you know shut down.
00:13:06.879 --> 00:13:10.960
They have a more modern version now, but you know, it's it's amazing.
00:13:11.039 --> 00:13:14.559
I I would imagine at the time 1300 megawatts was kind of unthinkable.
00:13:14.639 --> 00:13:14.799
Yeah.
00:13:15.039 --> 00:13:17.039
The amount of power would have been just shocking.
00:13:17.679 --> 00:13:20.960
Power the whole West Coast or something, you know, the the thinking was it was yeah.
00:13:21.279 --> 00:13:30.559
And and do we I mean, do we really have LA or some of these cities the way that we do without that that power generation, that cheap energy flowing in?
00:13:30.799 --> 00:13:31.200
Yeah.
00:13:31.519 --> 00:13:33.919
And is the same goes for Seattle.
00:13:34.080 --> 00:13:35.039
What are your thoughts on that?
00:13:35.440 --> 00:13:36.639
Yeah, no, I I agree.
00:13:36.720 --> 00:13:58.799
I mean, I think the um the ability to to have the power the or the energy needed to manufacture, to create movies, you know, you're talking about LA is critical to the growth of of these types of cities in the West in particular.
00:13:59.360 --> 00:14:08.399
Um you know, one of the big challenges in the West is is kind of the distance from generation to where the population centers are.
00:14:09.039 --> 00:14:15.840
And so uh many of the plants were built like uh you mentioned Grand Coulee and the Hoover Dam.
00:14:16.159 --> 00:14:20.639
Uh when those were built, there was very, very little population in those areas.
00:14:20.960 --> 00:14:27.759
And so we had these very long transmission lines to get it to the coasts, basically, where the population was growing.
00:14:28.399 --> 00:14:36.480
And even later into the 60s, 70s, 80s, uh coal plants were being built, let's call it in the mountain west.
00:14:36.559 --> 00:14:36.639
Yeah.
00:14:36.799 --> 00:14:43.279
And with the same idea, move that power to the coast, particularly to California, as its population was booming.
00:14:43.600 --> 00:14:49.519
And outside of these hydroelectric, primarily these generating stations were coal powered, is that right?
00:14:49.919 --> 00:14:50.159
Yeah.
00:14:50.320 --> 00:15:02.320
I mean, coal, coal um, you know, probably from the 50s through the 90s into the early 2000s was our primary uh generating source uh as a country as a whole.
00:15:02.799 --> 00:15:11.919
And I think post-World War II, um, we started looking at kind of this nuclear era of generating.
00:15:12.080 --> 00:15:20.960
Something I find interesting about the nuclear uh power generation is they act similarly to like a coal or natural gas plant and that they're always on.
00:15:21.519 --> 00:15:25.440
And I wonder um why didn't we invest more?
00:15:25.679 --> 00:15:29.360
It seems like you know, I look at like France, they're primarily powered by nuclear.
00:15:30.000 --> 00:15:31.600
80% nuclear in France, yeah.
00:15:31.919 --> 00:15:45.919
And I realize a lot of the lead times for construction on these types of plants could be 10 years or um, you know, and whereas putting natural gas, especially after um, you know, the advent of fracking and and just the the cost reduction.
00:15:46.080 --> 00:15:46.480
Yep.
00:15:46.799 --> 00:15:48.240
So what's your thought there?
00:15:48.399 --> 00:15:53.360
I mean, the the transition, we had these major hydroelectric dams.
00:15:53.759 --> 00:15:58.559
Geographically, there's not really other locations to build projects of that scale.
00:15:58.879 --> 00:15:59.200
Correct.
00:15:59.519 --> 00:16:08.799
Um and so, you know, we we built out coal, got to about the 90s, 2000s, and then uh kind of that breakthrough of fracking kind of came into place.
00:16:08.960 --> 00:16:11.600
But uh, what's your thought on on that timeline?
00:16:12.080 --> 00:16:24.559
Yeah, I mean, specific to nuclear, um, you know, I think it's a it's a very abundant energy source that I wish there was more of domestically here here in the US and and all across North America.
00:16:24.799 --> 00:16:28.639
Um, you know, I think that the biggest challenge with nuclear is the fear.
00:16:29.360 --> 00:16:34.240
Um, you know, a a catastrophic event like a Chernobyl, and then there was also Three Mile Island.
00:16:34.399 --> 00:16:34.720
Sure.
00:16:34.879 --> 00:16:36.480
Um, it scared the public.
00:16:36.720 --> 00:16:45.919
There were we were talking about, you know, kind of Hollywood before their movies, yeah, the the the China syndrome and and and others that really scared the public even more.
00:16:46.240 --> 00:16:56.080
And so public support for nuclear uh significantly eroded uh by the mid-80s, uh let's call it 85, 86 time frame.
00:16:56.480 --> 00:17:11.119
And so while there had there were dozens of additional units that had been planned to be built, including NACE was originally founded to operate uh six plants that were going to be built in Washington State, of which only one got completed.
00:17:11.759 --> 00:17:16.880
Um that that public outcry uh really just shut down the industry.
00:17:17.039 --> 00:17:31.200
In fact, there was a there was a plant in California uh in the Sacramento area that got funded, built, started up, and then there was a um there was a vote, the public decided to shut it down after only one year of operation.
00:17:31.759 --> 00:17:34.240
So it's a billion-dollar investment just lost.
00:17:34.799 --> 00:17:42.880
Somewhat of human nature, maybe so you know, go you had mentioned the the Northeast blackout, 30 million without power.
00:17:43.200 --> 00:17:47.279
Uh, you know, at the time I think that was what 30% of the population?
00:17:47.599 --> 00:17:48.240
It was a massive.
00:17:48.640 --> 00:17:49.839
The one in the 60s, yeah, right.
00:17:50.559 --> 00:17:53.440
Which which eventually found you know created Nurk.
00:17:53.599 --> 00:17:53.920
Yep.
00:17:54.160 --> 00:18:00.240
Um, you know, what did they really even have a concept of that being a possibility at the time?
00:18:00.400 --> 00:18:12.960
I mean, it's it seems like it's generally a domino effect that they don't account for is like, well, we have these three things in place, and but if they all go offline, then you know you could end up with a major blackout like that.
00:18:13.200 --> 00:18:13.359
Right.
00:18:13.440 --> 00:18:21.440
And yeah, I mean, I I would say that it it you may have had, you know, some PhDs at at universities saying, hey, watch out, this might happen.
00:18:21.599 --> 00:18:30.559
But but generally speaking, kind of within the industry, uh, there wasn't a concept that that you could have such a such a large cascading event.
00:18:30.799 --> 00:18:30.960
Yeah.
00:18:31.200 --> 00:18:32.880
But even then seeing is believing.
00:18:33.039 --> 00:18:33.599
Yeah, exactly.
00:18:33.759 --> 00:18:40.720
Even then, even after that happened, it was still well, one at that time in the in the mid-sixties, everything was a utility.
00:18:40.880 --> 00:18:46.319
There weren't kind of IPPs uh like we know them today, and you know, where NACE primarily works.
00:18:46.480 --> 00:18:49.599
Um, but it still was it was uh best practices sharing.
00:18:49.680 --> 00:18:51.039
It wasn't a required thing.
00:18:51.200 --> 00:18:59.119
It was just, hey, you utilities, you should work together better and coordinate, you know, uh make sure that your relays are set properly, et cetera, et cetera.
00:18:59.359 --> 00:19:12.559
It was the next blackout in 2001 where we lost 50 million people, similar uh area of the of the of the grid where Congress finally said, okay, this is gonna be required.
00:19:12.720 --> 00:19:12.880
Right.
00:19:13.039 --> 00:19:14.799
We're not just gonna say you should.
00:19:15.200 --> 00:19:20.880
So it went from just uh, you know, advice to regulation.
00:19:21.200 --> 00:19:21.920
Yes, exactly.
00:19:22.079 --> 00:19:25.039
And with stiff penalties if you if you don't do it.
00:19:25.359 --> 00:19:25.599
Right.
00:19:25.839 --> 00:19:32.640
Because the uh potential, you know, negative outcomes become so much greater as it expands.
00:19:32.799 --> 00:19:35.359
Like we said, the largest machine in the world.
00:19:35.519 --> 00:19:35.839
Yep.
00:19:36.079 --> 00:19:42.160
Um so you know, you you mentioned 2003, 55 million without power.
00:19:42.240 --> 00:19:42.480
Yep.
00:19:42.640 --> 00:19:45.119
That really solidified what NURC is doing.
00:19:45.279 --> 00:19:45.519
Yep.
00:19:45.759 --> 00:19:49.680
Um tell sort of weave in the the story of NACE.
00:19:49.920 --> 00:19:58.240
Because we uh you know we did come about in the the 80s, but yeah, um, you know, your hand in and what we're doing with Nurk was a big part of that.
00:19:58.319 --> 00:19:59.839
So I'm curious to hear your story on that.
00:20:00.240 --> 00:20:00.559
Yeah.
00:20:00.799 --> 00:20:04.400
Um you mentioned, you know, NACE started in in 1980.
00:20:04.559 --> 00:20:07.359
We did our first O and M contract in 1987.
00:20:08.000 --> 00:20:15.119
And and the reason that that um a company like NACE could exist was because the market was changing.
00:20:15.440 --> 00:20:18.559
Um so I mentioned in the 60s it was all utilities.
00:20:19.279 --> 00:20:36.880
Um in in the 70s uh there was uh uh an act through Congress passed called PERPA that allowed power plants that supplied steam to some kind of process industry to be built with private money.
00:20:37.279 --> 00:20:40.079
It no longer needed to be regulated by the utility.
00:20:40.480 --> 00:20:47.519
Um and actually this PERPA regulation required the utility to purchase the power from those plants.
00:20:48.000 --> 00:20:52.720
So it started to to just kind of crack the door a little bit on deregulation.
00:20:53.119 --> 00:20:57.279
And so that's what created the opportunity for NACE to exist as an OM company.
00:20:58.160 --> 00:21:08.799
And um so you know, we we we there were few IPPs when we started doing that work in in the mid-80s, and more and more in them over time.
00:21:08.960 --> 00:21:14.960
In particular, starting in about 1996 uh through 2002, there was a huge boom.
00:21:15.039 --> 00:21:22.799
Uh uh uh there was a a large demand growth expected just like we're seeing today, and so lots and lots of plants are being built, and it was being built with private money.
00:21:23.440 --> 00:21:29.839
And so um that really uh gave NACE the opportunity to to grow uh significantly.
00:21:30.559 --> 00:21:37.279
Um you mentioned NURC and and the regulations associated associated with the 2003 blackout.
00:21:37.759 --> 00:21:56.880
Um, you know, one of the areas that that NACE really started diving into um when those regulations became enforceable was the Nurk space because there weren't people that had expertise uh uh in that space, particularly related to independent power producers.
00:21:56.960 --> 00:22:10.960
And so we we created a team that that uh Um but you know, we we created program documents and and and consulting uh to support our own fleet and then we thought, hey, you know, this is something that the rest of the industry needs as well.
00:22:11.119 --> 00:22:16.319
And so we've we've grown that business over the years um uh to what it is today.
00:22:16.559 --> 00:22:17.039
Yeah.
00:22:17.920 --> 00:22:21.359
Going back to when NASA really entered the picture, yeah.
00:22:21.440 --> 00:22:24.559
Um how much has changed since then to now?
00:22:25.039 --> 00:22:34.559
You know, in the 80s, uh there was kind of slowdown of what we're doing with nuclear, um, moving more, you know, back towards coal.
00:22:34.640 --> 00:22:38.240
Um, and then really the nineties and two thousands kind of things shook up there.
00:22:38.480 --> 00:22:38.720
Yep.
00:22:38.960 --> 00:22:42.559
So yeah, tell me about how has NACE been involved in that?
00:22:42.720 --> 00:22:45.759
What what's what's been our thing along the way?
00:22:46.079 --> 00:23:02.319
Yeah, um, so you know, as you mentioned, or as we've discussed, the the the change from kind of coal to gas happened because uh uh one environmental regulations, two uh gas was a relatively cheap and stable uh fuel source.
00:23:02.640 --> 00:23:13.680
Um and so those plants because they were cheaper and easier to build, uh uh drove more private money into the space.
00:23:14.000 --> 00:23:23.920
And so we've grown, not that we haven't operated every type of technology except nuclear, but we've grown significantly from the growth in in gas.
00:23:24.559 --> 00:23:35.519
And um and so that that has been uh probably our the primary uh type of plants that NASA's operated over over the decades.
00:23:35.680 --> 00:23:46.400
I think you know we operate 250 plants a day, probably um 150 of them plus are gas-based, either combined cycle or or simple cycle.
00:23:46.480 --> 00:23:48.799
Um so that's where we're we're very, very strong.
00:23:49.200 --> 00:23:49.519
Yeah.
00:23:49.759 --> 00:24:01.440
And technologically, it wasn't until they found a way to extract that natural gas um in the 90s, 2000s that it became so economically viable.
00:24:01.839 --> 00:24:04.559
Yeah, you're talking about fracking, right, and the fracking revolution.
00:24:04.720 --> 00:24:12.319
And we found we we could extract gas in other parts of the country, you know, as opposed to just West Texas, for example, and and eastern New Mexico.
00:24:12.720 --> 00:24:18.480
And my understanding was we were going primarily from importing to now we're primarily exporting.
00:24:18.640 --> 00:24:19.039
Yep.
00:24:19.279 --> 00:24:30.240
And so it's really changed our economic uh, you know, in terms of energy production, in terms of the grid, um, how it's divided up has changed dramatically.
00:24:30.319 --> 00:24:30.559
Yep.
00:24:30.720 --> 00:24:35.680
Uh and uh, you know, also the benefit of reduced CO2 emissions.
00:24:35.839 --> 00:24:36.079
Yep.
00:24:36.240 --> 00:24:38.880
Um so a lot's changed since then.
00:24:39.039 --> 00:24:49.200
And um now getting into 2010s and and modern day uh renewables are kind of coming online and and they're much cheaper uh than uh they used to be.
00:24:49.279 --> 00:24:55.279
And so my understanding is now up to what 90% of new energy being added to the grid is renewable.
00:24:55.440 --> 00:24:55.680
Yep.
00:24:55.839 --> 00:24:57.119
Uh tell me a bit about that.
00:24:57.519 --> 00:24:57.839
Yeah.
00:24:58.000 --> 00:25:11.359
Um, so uh kind of as you mentioned, um wind and solar in particular um for for decades were very expensive relative to the amount of power output that you got.
00:25:11.839 --> 00:25:25.279
Um and starting around 2010, 2015 time frame, um they the the the cost for installation uh and and operations and maintenance of those went down significantly.
00:25:25.839 --> 00:25:33.200
And so the these days the the cheapest form of generation is probably solar.
00:25:33.519 --> 00:25:39.839
The downside of solar, of course, is that the sun doesn't shine all the time and and we need electricity all the time.
00:25:40.079 --> 00:25:51.440
Um and so right now um uh in in California and in Texas in particular, um a lot of solar is being installed in conjunction with battery storage.
00:25:51.519 --> 00:25:51.759
Right.
00:25:52.000 --> 00:26:08.400
So that when the sun is shining, you can you can charge up your battery, and then when you need it, you know, overnight, or at least during the the periods when people are still using it into the evenings, you can discharge those batteries and you don't you don't have that huge drop-off in in generation capacity.
00:26:08.720 --> 00:26:16.400
So, you know, NASA's played a role and we we we've operated and and done remote operation of of solar battery storage, wind.
00:26:16.480 --> 00:26:21.279
Um, and and particularly in wind, we've been in that space for over 20 years.
00:26:21.519 --> 00:26:25.920
Um even before it was as cost efficient as it is now.
00:26:27.119 --> 00:26:38.559
Yeah, I think there is this belief of like, hey, we just need to shut down all the coal plants, we need to shut down all the natural gas plants, and the reality is a little bit more nuanced than that.
00:26:38.720 --> 00:26:54.960
I think um even as we add much more renewables to the grid, like you said, the the gap um, particularly on whether the wind is blowing or the sun is shining, uh, needs to be filled by batteries, that technology is maturing still.
00:26:55.279 --> 00:26:58.079
Um so there's some investment.
00:26:58.160 --> 00:27:00.079
Uh it seems like that's that's growing.
00:27:00.240 --> 00:27:02.880
The investment of new solar plants going in.
00:27:03.039 --> 00:27:05.279
Many of them do have the battery technology.
00:27:05.519 --> 00:27:05.839
Yep.
00:27:06.079 --> 00:27:08.640
Um, so there's a bit of a gap there still.
00:27:09.039 --> 00:27:12.400
And uh it's kind of an all hands-on-deck approach, I think.
00:27:12.640 --> 00:27:17.920
Yeah, I mean, I I think last time we we talked, you know, I I kind of mentioned I'm an all of the above person.
00:27:18.000 --> 00:27:19.200
I think we need it all.
00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:30.960
Um, and I think that the economics will drive the economics of each geographical region within the North American grid will will drive what type of generation makes the most sense there.
00:27:31.200 --> 00:27:37.200
Um, you know, you're not gonna really want to install solar up in Alaska, it's not gonna help you that much that much, you know.
00:27:37.519 --> 00:27:47.759
Um and so it's just finding the right solution um for whatever the problem is in in the area that you're in is really important.
00:27:47.920 --> 00:27:57.279
And you know, I don't I don't agree with we should shut down all the all the the uh uh the gas and and coal-fired power plants.
00:27:57.359 --> 00:28:03.279
I think we we need them and and I don't know how long we'll need them for, but it's at least a decade, sure.
00:28:03.440 --> 00:28:05.359
Um if not much, much longer than that.
00:28:05.519 --> 00:28:10.400
Um I'd love to see we we touched on nuclear before, and I think last time we talked, we also talked about nuclear.
00:28:10.559 --> 00:28:21.920
I'd love to see more nuclear come on, either whether it's small modular reactors or even the large uh you know, 1500 megawatt uh uh type solutions that we already have implemented.
00:28:22.079 --> 00:28:30.559
Uh I just think it's you know it's expensive to build, but it's a very low cost relative to how much output you get uh over the long term.
00:28:30.640 --> 00:28:35.200
And these plants now, uh many of them have been licensed for 80 years.
00:28:35.440 --> 00:28:42.400
So you, you know, you yeah, you may spend a couple billion dollars, but you get 80 years of very low cost, very stable generation.
00:28:42.480 --> 00:28:42.559
Right.
00:28:42.720 --> 00:28:45.680
And you only need to take an outage every 18 to 24 months.
00:28:45.839 --> 00:28:48.319
Well, and otherwise they're just on the grid producing constantly.
00:28:48.640 --> 00:28:49.599
Yeah, always on.
00:28:49.759 --> 00:28:50.079
Yeah.
00:28:50.480 --> 00:28:54.720
And it's yeah, I mean, the the benefits are are massive.
00:28:55.039 --> 00:29:00.880
Uh the in the initial investment, the you know, some of those time frames, some of the regulation involved.
00:29:01.200 --> 00:29:02.880
Um, it gets more complicated.
00:29:03.039 --> 00:29:11.359
And when you look at the abundance of natural gas, when you look at the ability to create a generating station for natural gas, much easier.
00:29:11.519 --> 00:29:11.759
Yep.
00:29:11.920 --> 00:29:16.640
Um, and then looking at the future is is these data centers.
00:29:16.799 --> 00:29:17.119
Yep.
00:29:17.279 --> 00:29:22.720
Um, they're what 5% of what we're using on the grid currently, but we expect that to grow quite a bit.
00:29:22.880 --> 00:29:24.240
How much is that going to grow?
00:29:24.319 --> 00:29:24.799
Do we know?
00:29:25.200 --> 00:29:34.400
Yeah, I mean, by by 2035, the projections are that it'll triple um and so it could be up to 15% of the load growth.
00:29:34.480 --> 00:29:50.559
Now, one of the interesting things has been that um because the what's called the cues uh within these different uh uh market regions are so long that data center developers are deciding to do what's called behind the meter generation.
00:29:50.640 --> 00:29:57.119
They're just building power plants not connected to the grid in any way to power just the data centers.
00:29:57.440 --> 00:29:57.759
Right.
00:29:58.000 --> 00:29:59.680
And so completely isolated.
00:30:00.079 --> 00:30:09.119
You know, that that concept means that that they might be able to build much, much faster now than than kind of we've traditionally seen.
00:30:09.680 --> 00:30:16.400
Uh the challenge still is getting turbines or or getting reciprocating engines.
00:30:16.480 --> 00:30:21.119
What whatever you want to use to power um it's sold out for five years.
00:30:21.279 --> 00:30:21.599
Right.
00:30:21.759 --> 00:30:32.640
Um if you if you were to order a uh an H class or a G class machine right now from GE, Mitsubishi, Siemens, um, you wouldn't get it till 2031 at the soonest.
00:30:33.039 --> 00:30:36.319
And so um so are we in a holding pattern right now?
00:30:36.640 --> 00:30:42.480
We're just the you know, within NACE, we we have our engineered performance team and they're finding turbines around the world.
00:30:42.640 --> 00:30:42.799
Yeah.
00:30:43.119 --> 00:30:49.039
Unused or used turbines um that we can bring and install quicker.
00:30:49.200 --> 00:30:49.519
Right.
00:30:49.599 --> 00:31:00.960
Um so we've found units that are 50 years old that have been in layup for 30 years, and you know, we're gonna make them usable again and install those uh for our data center clients.
00:31:01.200 --> 00:31:04.480
Um so it it we're we're definitely not at a standstill.
00:31:04.640 --> 00:31:11.359
Um, but we're not moving as fast as as you know, particularly the the Googles and the Metas and the Amazons would like.
00:31:11.519 --> 00:31:11.759
Yeah.
00:31:11.920 --> 00:31:14.400
They're not used to waiting, they're used to spending money and it just happens to be.
00:31:21.119 --> 00:31:23.119
And some of these things are just logistics.
00:31:24.000 --> 00:31:28.799
You know, we can't just make a turbine appear out of thin air.
00:31:29.119 --> 00:31:29.200
Right.
00:31:29.279 --> 00:31:34.799
And we're seeing uh uh customers or potential customers go to smaller and smaller units.
00:31:34.960 --> 00:31:45.279
So instead of installing one 500 megawatt combined cycle type of type of facility, they're buying you know, a hundred five megawatt units.
00:31:45.440 --> 00:31:49.519
Now that's a it's a maintenance nightmare, but you can get those units faster.
00:31:49.599 --> 00:31:49.759
Right.
00:31:49.920 --> 00:31:55.039
You know, you can go down to Home Depot and grab a 500 KW uh generator right now.
00:31:55.200 --> 00:31:55.519
Right.
00:31:55.759 --> 00:31:58.000
You just need a lot of those to power a data center.
00:31:58.240 --> 00:31:58.720
Yeah.
00:31:59.039 --> 00:32:07.599
You know, some might ask, well, you know, why not invest in some of the renewables, like do a solar plant and battery storage and that that sort of thing.
00:32:07.680 --> 00:32:11.839
And my understanding is may not be reliable as they need.
00:32:12.079 --> 00:32:15.119
It may not be economical as they desire.
00:32:15.279 --> 00:32:15.680
Yep.
00:32:15.920 --> 00:32:20.880
And I've heard a lot of talk around the small module, modular reactors.
00:32:21.039 --> 00:32:32.880
Um, maybe the branding gets a boost because there's not explicitly nuclear in the so I wonder if that's maybe an element, maybe it being modular, being small, it feels like very contained.
00:32:32.960 --> 00:32:33.279
Yeah.
00:32:33.440 --> 00:32:35.200
Um, I mean, is that the future?
00:32:35.279 --> 00:32:37.519
Do you see uh we've broken ground on some.
00:32:37.599 --> 00:32:38.319
What is there?
00:32:38.400 --> 00:32:41.839
There's one in Wyoming, there's a couple others percolating around.
00:32:41.920 --> 00:32:48.880
But yeah, there's one up at Idaho National Lab, I think, and they're they're installing one at uh one of the utilities up in Ontario at the moment.
00:32:49.200 --> 00:32:51.440
And some of them are up to what, 300 megawatts.
00:32:51.920 --> 00:32:52.079
Yeah.
00:32:52.160 --> 00:32:53.839
I think the one seem that small.
00:32:54.000 --> 00:32:58.319
No, I mean it's small relative to you know the traditional nuclear.
00:32:58.559 --> 00:32:58.960
Yeah.
00:32:59.119 --> 00:33:01.599
Um, I think there's a lot of potential there.
00:33:02.160 --> 00:33:13.519
As they've gotten larger though, I worry that you're losing that modularization concept where you can just almost like a trailer home where you can just punch out a bunch of them and ship them to wherever you want.
00:33:13.599 --> 00:33:13.839
Yeah.
00:33:14.079 --> 00:33:21.440
You know, at 300 megawatts, there's still a lot of customization that needs to be done during during the construction phase.
00:33:21.599 --> 00:33:27.359
Whereas, you know, maybe maybe those smaller kind of initially we were talking about 50 megawatt.
00:33:27.519 --> 00:33:32.079
You might be able to, you know, build those at a factory and ship them around the around the world.
00:33:32.240 --> 00:33:32.559
Yeah.
00:33:32.799 --> 00:33:38.240
Um, so I I do worry that we lose some of that modularization at these larger sizes.
00:33:38.400 --> 00:33:47.599
It's more attractive uh for people building them because obviously the that that larger power output, but um I I wonder about that piece of it.
00:33:47.680 --> 00:33:55.359
Yeah because if you're doing 300 and you have to do all that customization, why not just go to the 1.2 to 1.5 gig, you know, traditional.
00:33:55.759 --> 00:34:04.240
Yeah, and I saw, you know, Microsoft is they they purchased the uh reactor of the three mile island.
00:34:04.319 --> 00:34:07.519
Um yeah, they they purchased the output of of that to restart it.
00:34:07.920 --> 00:34:08.000
Right.
00:34:08.079 --> 00:34:08.239
Yep.
00:34:08.480 --> 00:34:12.960
So what 2028, it's back online and exactly um 900 megawatts right there.
00:34:13.199 --> 00:34:20.000
It seems sort of like uh inflection point historically, you know, because it was a big moment that it got shut down in the first place.
00:34:20.159 --> 00:34:29.760
And um, you know, historically speaking, the safeguards in place at the time did work the way we wanted them to.
00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:31.440
Um just very scary.
00:34:31.760 --> 00:34:32.000
Right.
00:34:32.239 --> 00:34:36.719
Which yeah, obviously the worst case scenario is what we we fear ultimately.
00:34:36.960 --> 00:34:38.480
But um the Chernobyl.
00:34:39.039 --> 00:34:40.000
And that's a worst case scenario.
00:34:40.239 --> 00:34:40.480
Sure.
00:34:40.559 --> 00:34:40.639
Yeah.
00:34:40.960 --> 00:34:41.679
Yeah, exactly.
00:34:41.840 --> 00:34:46.239
And um, you know, then there's of course the argument of well, what about the the waste?
00:34:46.400 --> 00:34:47.199
What do we do with that?
00:34:47.440 --> 00:34:58.880
You know, and um in my mind, I think of that as something that's you know could be kicked down the road a bit, you know, they're probably fine in their casks outside the facility for now.
00:34:59.119 --> 00:35:20.800
Um but but yeah, I mean, I think at the end of the day, the uh complexity um stuff coming online, the next five years, it seems like these small modular, excuse me, small modular reactors will be a big part of these data centers, especially if they they grow, you know, triple in the next 10 years.
00:35:20.960 --> 00:35:21.360
Yeah.
00:35:21.519 --> 00:35:23.920
Um we're gonna need a lot of power.
00:35:24.000 --> 00:35:24.480
Yeah.
00:35:24.719 --> 00:35:31.840
And the idea that we're gonna be shutting down plants doesn't seem likely in the near term.
00:35:32.159 --> 00:35:36.239
Yeah, I mean the the economics are still very challenging for for coal plants.
00:35:36.480 --> 00:35:36.719
Sure.
00:35:36.960 --> 00:35:52.800
Um, and I think that um that's probably the biggest like we want that generation, but it cost twice as much to make a megawatt at a depending on where it is, what type of fuel, et cetera, et cetera.
00:35:52.960 --> 00:35:57.599
But you know, it can tw cost twice as much to make a megawatt at a coal plant than at a gas plant.
00:35:57.760 --> 00:35:58.000
Right.
00:35:58.159 --> 00:36:09.760
And and that's where it gets hard to justify, whether whether you're at a utility and you're passing the cost off to your rate payers like you and I, um, or if you're private equity and you're looking at a return on your investment.
00:36:09.920 --> 00:36:10.320
Right.
00:36:10.480 --> 00:36:15.440
Um when you double the price per megawatt, it's just much fewer days you can run and make money.
00:36:15.599 --> 00:36:15.840
Right.
00:36:16.000 --> 00:36:22.159
And coal plants aren't good at sitting there cold cold iron and and starting up in a pinch.
00:36:22.320 --> 00:36:23.679
That's just not how they were built.
00:36:24.000 --> 00:36:24.559
Yeah.
00:36:24.880 --> 00:36:38.559
Looking at the transmission lines, I think something that is not understood fully is if we do move a lot of our generation to renewables, we have to get that energy elsewhere.
00:36:38.719 --> 00:36:42.800
And a lot of times these are located um in not very populous places.
00:36:42.960 --> 00:36:43.360
Right.
00:36:43.599 --> 00:36:45.840
And so that's a whole other challenge.
00:36:46.079 --> 00:36:47.199
Some we've talked about before.
00:36:47.360 --> 00:36:47.519
Yep.
00:36:47.599 --> 00:36:47.760
Yep.
00:36:47.920 --> 00:36:49.440
How does that play into all of this?
00:36:49.840 --> 00:37:02.480
Yeah, I mean, the the where we have, particularly for wind generation, where where the wind blows uh the hardest and uh the most consistently are in parts of the country that very few people live.
00:37:02.800 --> 00:37:08.559
And so um, you know, there's a 3,500 megawatt wind farm proposed in Wyoming.
00:37:08.800 --> 00:37:14.159
Well, Wyoming has a population of 500,000 people, 600,000 people, you know, very, very few.
00:37:14.320 --> 00:37:20.960
And so we got to transmit that to uh to places where people live, Texas, California, etc.
00:37:21.519 --> 00:37:27.440
And and building a transmission line uh in the US today just takes a really long time.
00:37:27.519 --> 00:37:33.360
We've we've been involved with several, uh one of which took over 20 years, one of which took 15 years.
00:37:33.679 --> 00:37:41.519
Um and you know, we were talking about the the the load growth of data centers in a 10-year window here.
00:37:43.519 --> 00:37:49.760
That taking 20 years to build a transmission line is just not going to be realistic to meet the need.
00:37:50.239 --> 00:37:52.719
Is it just the complexity that we're at now?
00:37:52.960 --> 00:38:04.480
Because I imagine the 30s and 40s there was not you know, there weren't a lot of people to protest these lines being run across the country, and the need was obvious.
00:38:04.800 --> 00:38:05.119
Yeah.
00:38:05.280 --> 00:38:14.400
So I mean, I think it's a combination of regulatory hurdles, um, uh policy changes uh with with state governments.
00:38:14.559 --> 00:38:20.559
Um it's different in every state, and and even within certain states, there's differences uh in different counties.
00:38:20.960 --> 00:38:24.559
Um and then there's there's landowners, you know.
00:38:24.639 --> 00:38:31.599
You you're building a power plant, generally you can buy a hundred acres or fifty acres of land and it's yours.
00:38:32.159 --> 00:38:40.800
Um when you're running a uh several hundred mile uh transmission line, you're not gonna buy all the land, number one.
00:38:41.199 --> 00:38:52.559
And number two, you have to get permission from each of those landowners to have a a project that's in the middle of their pasture, for example, for 50 years with a transmission tower.
00:38:52.719 --> 00:38:53.119
Right.
00:38:53.360 --> 00:39:01.760
Um some some folks see it as an additional revenue source and and they're grateful for it, but others are like, you know, not on my land.
00:39:01.840 --> 00:39:06.960
You know, my my grandfather's grandfather had this this property and I don't want to change it.
00:39:07.199 --> 00:39:09.119
The NIMBY's yes, exactly.
00:39:10.159 --> 00:39:21.519
You know, uh and not to make it, you know, too political, but of course the there's always concern related to emissions, CO2, these types of things.
00:39:21.840 --> 00:39:29.519
The reality at this point in time is even if the US gets to zero, the majority of emissions are coming out of Asia.
00:39:30.400 --> 00:39:36.159
And yeah, I I guess I wonder what what does the future look like there?
00:39:36.320 --> 00:39:51.119
I mean, we have limited control over how other countries run, and and I think there's an argument being made that we were able to industrialize off of cheap, you know, fuel sources like coal, like natural gas.
00:39:51.360 --> 00:39:54.719
Shouldn't these other developing countries have the same opportunity?
00:39:55.280 --> 00:40:03.440
Um so there's a lot of different elements at play that it just isn't, it's not as simple as let's just shut down this plant and it's all fixed.
00:40:03.599 --> 00:40:03.760
Right.
00:40:04.000 --> 00:40:10.719
You know, there's the industrial processes that make up a large uh amount of the emissions, and those are very difficult to control.
00:40:10.960 --> 00:40:11.519
They are, yeah.
00:40:11.760 --> 00:40:24.880
And so I mean, I know that it's often sort of condensed into this renewables good, conventional bad, but it's really a much more nuanced picture than that.
00:40:25.199 --> 00:40:26.400
Yeah, no, I agree.
00:40:26.559 --> 00:40:35.280
Um, you know, it it's interesting, you know, particularly in China, where they have been a developing economy for for 50 years, let's let's call it.
00:40:35.440 --> 00:40:45.440
Um they're building more coal plants than anybody than the rest of the world combined, but they're also building more solar and transmission than the rest of the world combined.
00:40:45.519 --> 00:40:45.840
Yep.
00:40:46.000 --> 00:40:50.320
And so they're building that they're they've basically embraced the all of the above strategy.
00:40:50.400 --> 00:40:54.400
They're building everything, they're building more nuclear than any than than anybody else.
00:40:54.559 --> 00:40:59.039
They don't have the abundance of natural resources that we have, so they're not really building that much gas.
00:40:59.119 --> 00:40:59.360
Right.
00:40:59.519 --> 00:41:03.599
Or the gas they're building, they're actually firing it on liquid fuel like diesel.
00:41:04.159 --> 00:41:08.559
Um and so it is it is an interesting uh conundrum.
00:41:08.639 --> 00:41:16.719
Uh, but as I mentioned, I think our our approach in North America and particularly in the US needs to be hey, we just need more power right now.
00:41:16.880 --> 00:41:22.800
And and so we can we can add emissions controls on the back end, which is what we've been doing for decades.
00:41:22.960 --> 00:41:23.360
Right.
00:41:23.599 --> 00:41:26.239
Um and that's probably worthwhile.
00:41:26.639 --> 00:41:33.679
The reality in my mind, it seems like carbon capture is gonna be a huge part of the future.
00:41:33.840 --> 00:41:39.760
Um, maybe something that doesn't get as much attention and will require a lot of energy.
00:41:40.239 --> 00:41:45.119
And maybe it's not until we have commercial fusion that really that becomes viable.
00:41:45.519 --> 00:41:46.079
Sure, yeah.
00:41:46.320 --> 00:41:53.679
Um so it's commercial fusion would uh make all these other sources of energy moot.
00:41:53.840 --> 00:41:57.440
I mean, you just wouldn't need anything else if we can if we can commercialize that.
00:41:57.840 --> 00:42:01.920
They pull the uh primary ingredients they need from seawater, right?
00:42:02.239 --> 00:42:02.719
Yes, exactly.
00:42:02.960 --> 00:42:07.199
And so it's the most abundant resource on the planet.
00:42:07.360 --> 00:42:09.199
It's I mean, we have more ocean than anything else.
00:42:09.440 --> 00:42:09.920
Yes, yes.
00:42:10.320 --> 00:42:13.119
And I think a single glass could power a city.
00:42:13.280 --> 00:42:13.440
Yeah.
00:42:13.920 --> 00:42:14.320
Something like that.
00:42:14.639 --> 00:42:17.440
So you're creating a small star.
00:42:17.840 --> 00:42:18.159
Yeah.
00:42:18.320 --> 00:42:26.880
You know, that we're essentially and and they've what a few years ago showed the proof of concept that it they can get there.
00:42:27.039 --> 00:42:30.559
Um although it's you know, the joke is it's always thirty years away.
00:42:30.800 --> 00:42:31.119
Exactly.
00:42:31.440 --> 00:42:36.639
Um it seems like it's probably closer to 1015, maybe to uh something commercial.
00:42:36.800 --> 00:42:37.119
Yep.
00:42:37.280 --> 00:42:45.760
Um yeah, the proof of concept, you know, it it it worked to create power, but it took more power to to create that power than we got out of it.
00:42:45.920 --> 00:42:46.079
Yeah.
00:42:46.239 --> 00:42:51.519
Um but yeah, I mean there's there's two places up here uh just north of Seattle in Everett, two different companies.
00:42:51.599 --> 00:42:56.400
One's backed by by uh Bill Gates, and I can't remember who the other's backed by.
00:42:56.559 --> 00:43:00.719
That you know it it seems promising, and I'm very hopeful.
00:43:00.880 --> 00:43:05.519
It's just even that, even if it's 10 years out, we got a lot of work to do before we get there.
00:43:05.760 --> 00:43:06.320
Yeah.
00:43:06.639 --> 00:43:11.280
And you know, right now it's in the billions of dollars of funding.
00:43:11.440 --> 00:43:11.679
Yep.
00:43:11.840 --> 00:43:25.280
Um, I imagine when there's a little more proof when they they sh you know can create a small generating station that then a lot of you know that private equity will flood into and oh yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:43:25.760 --> 00:43:31.039
So I I think the moral of the story at this point is there's a lot of possibilities in the future.
00:43:31.119 --> 00:43:31.360
Yep.
00:43:31.519 --> 00:43:37.119
And it seems like the current need is the top of mind, the thing that's the most pressing.
00:43:37.280 --> 00:43:37.519
Yep.
00:43:37.679 --> 00:43:44.320
And uh, you know, that's human history, it seems like and that's the history of the grid is solving problems as they come up.
00:43:44.480 --> 00:43:44.800
Yep.
00:43:44.960 --> 00:43:48.480
So and the current problem is this load demand, just right.
00:43:48.639 --> 00:43:53.519
Needing more flat for for thirty years ish and now which is kind of amazing.
00:43:54.559 --> 00:43:55.199
Like crazy.
00:43:55.440 --> 00:43:55.760
Yeah.
00:43:55.920 --> 00:43:59.679
Yeah, and and seeing some of these new innovations with you know.
00:44:00.239 --> 00:44:06.000
these AI platforms and LLMs and you know Claude and um you know Chat GPT.
00:44:06.159 --> 00:44:07.280
Yeah it it's amazing.
00:44:07.360 --> 00:44:10.320
And we don't necessarily know how things will shake out in the next five years.
00:44:10.480 --> 00:44:13.440
So it seems like there's a lot of unknowns right now.
00:44:13.760 --> 00:44:22.239
It seems like the thing that people are trusting in right now is to invest their money in the companies that are you know on the the forefront of the technology.
00:44:22.400 --> 00:44:36.079
But um even looking at a company like Deep Seek in um you know 2025 late 2024, 2025, um they showed that they were able to train their model for much less right you know money, much less energy.
00:44:36.400 --> 00:44:38.079
Yeah much less compute compute power.
00:44:38.159 --> 00:44:43.360
Yeah right and so the question is you know how much energy are we going to need?
00:44:43.440 --> 00:44:44.719
We don't it's hard to say.
00:44:44.960 --> 00:44:45.199
Right.
00:44:45.280 --> 00:44:51.199
You know more now that the chat bots are talking to each other you know how much how much power is that going to use over time.
00:44:51.360 --> 00:44:52.480
I mean it's really hard to know.
00:44:52.800 --> 00:44:55.280
But but then maybe they'll solve our fusion problem.
00:44:55.760 --> 00:45:17.360
Maybe yeah maybe they will just have them talk to each other solve that without we need to get somebody in here that uh is on the ground floor working on you know that cutting edge yeah exactly um yeah I I hopefully you know for the listeners this is giving them a a little bit of an overview of where we're at where we've come from it's a complicated story.
00:45:17.679 --> 00:45:27.039
It is it's uh it's not as simple as uh you know headlines tend to make it out to be and uh I think that NACE is in an interesting position.
00:45:27.280 --> 00:45:39.440
We don't own any of these assets we're we're able to go where the industry leads us and um so I think that we have a unique voice in that is trying to see the forest through from the trees a little bit.
00:45:41.360 --> 00:45:59.760
Yeah so Alan thanks for all your expertise and thoughts um no problem you know uh I I think there's a lot more to talk about but I think hopefully uh this hasn't been too much information but I feel like we've given a pretty good rundown from really inception to modern day.
00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:00.320
Yep.
00:46:00.559 --> 00:46:09.599
And I I like your uh your analysis that hey we've it seems like every step along the way here has been an adjustment to a problem.
00:46:10.000 --> 00:46:13.199
And the problem right now is different than it has been.
00:46:13.360 --> 00:46:15.920
So we will adjust as an industry we will adjust.
00:46:16.159 --> 00:46:18.960
Yeah and it's not something we could have predicted five, ten years ago.
00:46:19.280 --> 00:46:19.679
Exactly.
00:46:20.079 --> 00:46:21.840
And who knows where we'll be in five years.
00:46:22.400 --> 00:46:24.400
So you know looking forward to the ride.
00:46:24.880 --> 00:46:28.960
I think we'll figure it out I think we will we will humans are pretty resilient.
00:46:29.440 --> 00:46:32.000
So um but yeah appreciate your time.
00:46:32.239 --> 00:46:33.519
Absolutely
